


Scenes From a Life in Replay

by aadarshinah



Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Canon-Typical Violence, Civil War Team Iron Man, Comic Book Science, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, M/M, Minor Character Death, Non-Linear Narrative, Not Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Compliant, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Saving the World, Time Travel Fix-It, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Has A Heart, fixing the future sometimes backfires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-18
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2019-10-12 09:31:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 23
Words: 35,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17464943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aadarshinah/pseuds/aadarshinah
Summary: Thanos snaps his fingers in 2018 and Tony Stark wakes up in 1988. So does Stephen Strange. Together they decide to save the world.Things get complicated from there.





	1. 1 May, 2015 (I)

**Author's Note:**

> Yesterday, I was sitting in a meeting about telecommunications protocols at work when I was suddenly hit with the idea: _What if Strange sabotaged the Time Stone in some way so that the first time Thanos tried to really use it, he would end up triggering a failsafe that would send Stephen's consciousness back to a point in time where he'll be able to change things to save the world. He expects this to be a couple days in the past, maybe even as far back as Loki's invasion. Instead, he wakes up in 1988. He should be 7. Instead, he's 17 and the papers are all abuzz with child prodigy Tony Stark heading off to MIT, age 14._
> 
> This is not that story. Or, rather, it _is_ that story, told from the point of view of that universe's 2015. 
> 
> In this universe: 1) Stephen goes to Tony at MIT in 1988 to enlist his help, and is surprised to find he remembers the future too. 2) Together they decide to change the world in such a way that it will be able to withstand Thanos' invasion force, when it comes. 3) Along the way they fall in love. Accidentally. 4) The Winter Solider doesn't kill Howard and Maria Stark, because this universe's Howard stops working on the serum. Howard does, however, die in 1991 from actual drunk driving, but Maria is still alive as of 2015. 5) Obie's double dealing is found out earlier. 6) Also, while looking into Howard's things after his death, they find out that he was paying money under the table to one of his mistresses. Child support, to be specific, for his illegitimate daughter. This daughter would eventually become Mary Parker, Peter's mother. 7) Strange, as of 2015, has both his hands and his magic. This should be explained later. 8) The events of IM1, IM2, CA:FA, _Incredible Hulk_ , and Thor 1 have all taken place, with some changes. The events of _The Avengers_ have not. But somewhere out there Captain America has recently been defrosted and SHEILD is playing with Infinity Stones they don't understand....

Peter bounces on the balls of his feet as the old introductory reel starts to play on the screens.

 _"Tony Stark. Visionary. Genius. American patriot. Even from an early age, the son of legendary weapons developer Howard Stark quickly stole the spotlight with his brilliant and unique mind. At age four, he built his first circuit board. At age six, his first engine. And at 17, he graduated summa cum laude from MIT._ "

He takes a deep breath and, at Aunt Pepper's nod, walks out onto the darkened stage. Everyone's eyes are still on the screens, but those closest to the stage see him. A few mutter and point, and it's all Peter to do to walk to the front without hyperventilating.

" _Then, the passing of a titan. Howard Stark's lifelong friend and devoted wife, Maria Carbonell Stark_ , _steps in to help fill the gap left by the legendary founder, until, at age 21, the prodigal son returns and is anointed the new CEO of Stark Industries._ _With the keys to the kingdom, Tony expands upon his father's legacy with innovations in advanced robotics, biomedical engineering, and telecommunications while also-_ "

Peter grins when the video appears to flicker and tear, like an old film reel reaching the end of its length. He hadn't wanted to do opening day introductions for Stark Expo '15 when Pepper'd first asked, but when she'd given him permission to use it to get back at Tony for the Field Day Incident, so long as she signed off on it first... Well, there was no way Peter could say no to that, not even if seeing all the people gathered in front of the main stage, waiting for him to speak, is the most terrifying thing that's ever happened to him. But it would be so worth it...

The old introductory reel gives way to a video Peter had managed to capture on his phone over spring break, when Uncle Tony had driven him and Uncle Stephen up to Boston to visit MIT. It had been Peter's turn to control the radio, but Tony hadn't been complaining at that point - mostly because he is not as much of a music snob as he pretends and will sing along to most anything if he's concentrating on other things.

And so the scene shifts to the best angle Peter could get of Tony Stark singing along to Taylor Swift that he could capture from the backseat of the Porsche without giving away the game.

"' _...I should just tell you to leave 'cause I know exactly where it leads, but watch us go 'round and 'round each time. You got that James Dean daydream look in your eye and I got that red lip classic thing that you like. And when we go crashing down we come back every time, 'cause we never go out of style-'"_ the volume lowers abruptly as Tony-in-the-video catches sight of video-Peter recording, " _What are you doing? Stop recording right now."_

_"But Uncle Tony-"_

_"JARVIS, delete all the video on Peter's phone._ "

" _No! Wait, I promise! I'll stop recording! Just don't delete anything!"_

 _"Alright, kid. I'm trusting you. This better not show up on YouTube. I have a reputation as a genius billionaire philanthropist with taste and decernment,"_ video-Stephen scoffs off-screen, " _to maintain."_

 _"Whatever you say, Uncle Tony_."

The video fades out and stage lights rise - to thunderous applause. Peter's utterly blinded, but he's too busy beaming to care. "Hello everyone. I'm Peter Parker and welcome to Stark Expo '15!" There are cheers and, oh, this is exhilarating. If this is how it always is, he can see why Uncle Tony loves being in the spotlight. "Now, for those of you who don't know, not only is this the start of the tenth Stark Expo since it's introduction in 1942," - more cheers - "but this also a certain someone's forty-first birthday. So everybody put your hands together for the man who put this event together, the CEO of Stark International, our favorite genius billionaire philanthropist - and my favorite uncle - Tony Stark!" 

This earns him - well, Uncle Tony - a standing ovation as he joins Peter on stage - this time to the tune of the chorus of "New Romantics". Uncle Tony has a look on his face somewhere between _you think you're so funny_ and _young man, you're grounded_ as he approaches, but can't keep it up for long. By the time he pulls Peter into a hug, it's turned into a full-bodied laugh, and, yeah, he's going to have to start locking his bedroom door because the retaliatory prank for this is going to be epic.

"Thank you, thank you. My nephew, Peter Parker, ladies and gentlemen!"

Peter gives a wave and walks off the stage at an even pace as he can manage. He can hear Uncle Tony continue his speech behind him, even over the blood rushing through his ears.

"Now, I've always said the Stark Expo is about legacy - about leaving the world a better place then when we entered it.

"Since 1942, we've made great strides. We've eradicated polio, smallpox, and Guinea-worm disease. Mosquito-repellent fibers have almost made malaria a thing of the past. The latest generation of Stark prosthetics and orthopedic braces have restored mobility to five thousand veterans this year alone who were told at the time of their original injury that they'd never be able to walk again. Innovations in textiles and ceramics used in body armor have seen the number of operable injuries suffered by military and first responders drop fifteen percent in the last fifteen years, and global initiatives in peacekeeping, counterterrorism, and disarmament mean that fewer men and women are being put at risk in the first place.

"Over the next one-hundred twenty-six days, Stark Expo '15 will showcase the brightest minds the world has to offer. You'll see presentations on nanotechnology and neurogenesis, quantum mechanics and cryptocurrency; improved weather forecasting, improved living through gene therapy and genetically-modified crops, and, of course, all the best in Stark robotics, tablets, and smartphones."

Uncle Tony pauses at the renewed cheers. When he continues, his tone has turned serious, almost reflective. "What will the future bring? I don't know. No, really, I don't. I'm on the wrong side of forty now. The things I want from the future might not be what the future wants from me. But you're all young and full of dreams, which is why we're beginning this Stark Expo with the real future: you. So here to tell you about the grant and scholarship opportunities now available to schools, children grades seven through twelve, and researchers of all ages with the inaugural September Foundation is my dear friend, the CEO of Stark Industries, the indomitable Pepper Potts!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This whole chapter was inspired by Taylor Swift's "Style" coming on the radio when I was on the highway... and imagining Tony singing along to it, for whatever reason. I have no excuse. 
> 
> I honestly cannot say how long it will take me to update, or what direction this fic will take. That's a first for me, so let's see what happens together.


	2. 1 May, 2015 (II)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Digital Birthday Cake. Or, there's only so much two time travelers can do even if one of them is the head of a multi-national corporation and the other is in charge of all magic on Earth. Certain things are just inevitable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter and the next few can also be described in part as: _The Avengers_ set during the time period of _Age of Ultron_ while certain characters have memories of _Infinity War_ , now with 100% more Peter. 
> 
> For the record, Peter is 14 in this and just on this side of becoming Spider-Man, but without the other events of _Spider-Man: Homecoming_. Also, a lot of the initial plot for this was done in the middle of a very long meeting without access to movies or wikis for reference, so I'm probably getting some parts of the timeline wrong and willfully ignoring others. Sorry in advance.

"Happy birthday, Uncle Tony!" Peter says as he walks out of the elevator. Well, _says_ might be a bit of an understatement. _Shouts_ might be better. _Exclaims_ might be another, especially with the way he leaps onto his uncle's back the moment he's in range.

Only, Peter's forgotten he's not ten anymore, and since the radioactive spider bite he's shot up six inches. He's a little too big for piggyback rides, and going for a reverse hug is kind of impossible when he loses purchase halfway through and slides into an awkward heap on the concrete floor.

"Jeez, kid, don't kill yourself trying to give me a heart attack. Here's a pro tip: if you're desperate enough for your inheritance to try your hand at parricide, try not to get yourself killed in the process. Also, try not to do in a place with so many cameras. No matter how much JARVIS loves you, you'll never get away with it in the Tower."

Rolling his eyes - and scrambling off the floor, - Peter says in a tone everyone tells him is straight out of Uncle Tony's pre-MIT interview reels, "You're so weird. Also, Aunt May said to say there's been some kind of accident and she's stuck at the hospital. So, sorry, and save her some cake."

"I heard kid," Tony lets him know, throwing an arm around his shoulders. "Stephen called to let me know he'd be late too. Apparently a construction crane collapsed next to a subway station. They're saying it's a miracle that more people weren't hurt. I, of course, call it good civil engineering, but apparently people would rather attribute it to God when things go well. Science only gets the credit when something goes wrong. Go figure."

Peter, well used to Tony's asides by now, ignores all but the first part of this. "But it's your birthday. Uncle Stephen should be here for your birthday. He _does_ know he's not the only doctor in the city, right?"

"But he _is_ the best."

"Yes, but you're important too. I know you guys say it doesn't bother you when one of you has to miss a birthday, or work through a party, or fly halfway across the world to blow up terrorist weapons instead of having a normal Christmas... but you're only human. I mean, yes, you're heroes, both in your own way, but you're also human. No amount of _understanding_ changes the fact you need to be able to do normal things like have birthday cake with your husband on your birthday or else you'll forget what you're fighting for."

Tony stops halfway through dragging him towards the main room to blink at him, slowly, as if he's started speaking Ancient Sumerian. From a second head. Which is exploding from his stomach, like in that old movie, _Alien_.

"When did you get so smart, kid?"

"I basically just repeated the speech you and Uncle Stephen gave me when you said my work-life balance shouldn't be homework, Netflix, and vigilantism. Only, you know, with more cake."

Tony snorts. "Good, you had me worried. Don't grow up too fast on me kid. I still have eight years-"

"I'm fourteen, Uncle Tony!"

"Are you sure?" Tony starts dragging him towards the main room again, where Aunt Pepper and Uncle Happy are waiting with birthday cake. "Because I remember when you were born, kid. I remember it like yesterday. You were three weeks early and your dad was stuck at that conference in Hong Kong, so I got to be with your mom in the delivery room. I got to cut the cord... and carry you to the nursery... You were so small I was was sure I was going to drop you-"

"Stop! Please! God, Uncle Tony, I thought it was _your_ birthday. Aren't we meant to be making fun of _you_?"

"Been there, done that," Uncle Happy says now that they're close enough, lighting the last of the birthday candles, "donated the t-shirt to Goodwill."

"Feeling the love here guys," Uncle Tony drawls before leaning in to blow out the candles-

"Wait!"

Aunt Pepper almost drops the cake turning to look at him. "Peter!"

"What's wrong, kid?"

"Aren't we going to sing 'Happy Birthday'? Or, you know, put the right number of candles on the cake?"

Tony looks at him like he's speaking Sumerian again. "There _are_ the right number of candles."

"There are only eight candles on the cake." There are too, eight red-and-yellow candles all in a row, almost lost in the sea of frosting. "And only three of them are lit. I don't care what Uncle Rhodey says: you're not actually a kid, Uncle Tony."

"This is who's inheriting my tech empire, ladies and gentlemen. Count with me, Peter." He points at the first lit candle, the second from the left. "Thirty-two," he points to the next one, two candles down, "plus eight," his finger goes towards the last one, on the far right.

"...plus one," Peter finishes sheepishly. "It's forty-one in binary. Right. Got it. I'll just..."

"Watch your uncle blow out his candles so we can finally have cake? No big deal, kid. Like I said, you've lots of growing up left to do. If it really bothers you, we'll work on it. There are plenty of things you're good at that aren't computers and that's okay. Now," he blows out his three candles without giving anyone else a chance to interrupt, "cake."

 

 

Peter is halfway through his fifth slice of cake when JARVIS interrupts the no-holds-barred game of monopoly that has sprung up for want of child-friendly activity.

(Uncle Tony and Aunt Pepper are as cutthroat as can can be expected, but Uncle Happy has a stealth streak of brutality that's already cost Peter his last property. He's just watching the carnage at this point.)

"Sir, the telephone. I'm afraid my protocols are being overridden."

Then, over the speakers, comes a voice Peter's never heard before. "Mr Stark, we need to talk."

Uncle Tony goes stiller than these words seem to require. Stiller and far, far too pale. He makes a cutting motion at his throat in the direction of one of JARVIS' cameras before saying, as deathly serious as Peter's ever heard him, "Peter, go to your room. Don't come out until someone comes to get you."

"But-"

"Now. Please, Peter."

Peter would argue, but if he didn't know any better he'd say his uncle was _scared_. But that can't be right. Uncle Tony is Iron Man. A hero. Even when he was being tortured by terrorists in the middle of the desert and in so much pain because of the hole they carved into his chest, he was able to build the first Iron Man suit and save himself. If terrorists and nearly dying and everything that's happened since haven't been enough to scare him... then this must be terrible.

Locked in his room, he asks JARVIS for the main room security feeds and watches a man in a cheap suit (he's spent enough time around Uncle Tony and Uncle Stephen to know the difference and really wishes he didn't) walk out of an elevator. He watches Uncle Happy drop words like _trespassing_ and _harassment_ ; watches Aunt Pepper threaten the man's bosses with an _industrial espionage lawsuit_ , "or maybe I'll just let a few people know where they can find certain former killer for hire," (what the _fuck?_ ); watches Uncle Tony finally take the tablet the man brought with him and open the files on the holographic screens with a look of such foreboding that for the first time Peter understands what people mean by the saying _like somebody walked over my grave_.

"JARVIS? Can you get my suit ready? And maybe get me copies of those files Uncle Tony is looking at? I-" He swallows reflexively, "Whatever it is, I think it's going to need a lot more than just Iron Man to fix it."

JARVIS pauses far longer than a system of his complexity really needs to. Then, just when he's certain that the only thing coming is another lecture on staying out of classified files, JARVIS replies, "As you say, young sir."

The files auto-load on his own displays - _Banner, R. Bruce; Barton, Clint F.; Odinson, Thor; Rogers, Steven G.; Romanoff, Natasha A._ and half-a-dozen others _-_ playing scenes of devastation like he's not seen outside of movie screens and Howard's old product reels.

"Well then," Peter says, maybe to JARVIS or maybe just to himself, "looks like I have a lot of reading to catch up on," and settles into his desk chair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _0101001_ is _41_ in binary... Yes, I'm a computer nerd by day. However did you guess?
> 
> Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to read and review!


	3. 2 May, 2015 (I)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Onboarding Procedures for the Young Superhero. Or, starting a new job can be be hard, especially when your new coworkers wear a lot of bright spandex and black leather.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternatively: it's best practice to be suspicious of super secret spy organizations, and even spiderlings are not immune to sudden and inappropriate crushes. 
> 
> I'm envisioning _Thor_ as taking place over the summer of 2008 in this universe and, as with many things, it goes somewhat differently from canon, mainly in that: 1) it takes place over 2-3 months instead of 2-3 days, and 2) seeing Thor allied with someone in control of the Time Stone keeps Loki from sending the Destroyer after him, but 3) he still loses the crown - and his grip on the Rainbow Bridge - in different, equally problematic circumstances.

"Stick close to me, kid," Uncle Tony tells him as he brings the Iron Man armor in to land on the thing he calls _the super-secret pirate ship in the sky_. He asks JARVIS to get in touch with whoever's on point in Legal, because there's no way that SHIELD bought any of his tech or licensed any of his patents legally (and this place is basically crawling with proprietary Stark tech, from the reflector paneling on the hull to the antenna array jutting up into the clouds above them) before continuing, "I don't trust anyone here farther than I can throw them outside of the suit."

Peter wants to ask why they're working with these guys if they're such bad people, but remembers his reading. If aliens are really invading, they can't afford to be picky. So instead he says, "Yeah, not arguing with you there. I think I'm going to get a panic attack from the way everyone's looking at me. _Can_ you get a panic attack just from the way people look at you?" Peter takes a closer look at one of the black-outfitted agents and _really_ hopes he imagines the way the woman's fingers twitch towards the gun on her hip. He didn't think his heart rate could get any higher, but today is full of surprises all around. "When I die, tell Ned he can have my LEGO."

"You're _not_ going to die," Uncle Tony promises in that same anxious-serious-exhausted voice he's been pulling out ever since Cheap Suit showed up at the Tower. Then, _finally_ disengaging the mag-locks that keep their suits locked together in flight, "Don't let them get to you, kid. Stark men are made of iron. It takes a lot more than a bunch of morally-dubious spies to break us."

"That's... not exactly reassuring, Uncle Tony."

The can't see face through their respective faceplates, but he's pretty sure Tony rolls his eyes before dragging him towards the nearest airlock.

 

 

"I think it's about the mechanics. Iridium... What do they need the iridium for?" someone says as they enter the bridge and, wow, they're really going for the knock-off Star Destroyer feel, aren't they? Tony had told him on the flight to Germany that SHIELD had rid itself of its HYDRA infestation in the late-90s, after inconsistencies in Howard's effects and testimony from Obadiah Stane's plea bargain brought the intelligence service into the public eye, but _really_. If secret space bases and paramilitary dress codes are how they are trying to win back public trust, they really, _really_ need a better PR department.

Also, the old newsreels don't do justice to just how _bright_ Captain America's uniform is. Peter knows he has no room to talk, what with his original costume and all, but at least he wasn't _infiltrating Nazi Germany_ with an American flag emblazoned on his chest. How is this guy not dead?

Oh, right, super soldier serum.

And the guy Uncle Tony is talking to is an _alien god_.

Okay then.

"Good to see you again, Point Break. Shame about the circumstances. Is it just me, or was your brother actually _sane_ last time I saw you?"

"Indeed, Loki appears much changed. I do not know if his fall from Asgard has caused him to temporarily take leave of his senses or if this madness has always bode in his mind, but, regardless of the reasoning for his actions, I will see him returned to Asgard to face our father's judgement," the alien booms, clasping Uncle Tony's forearm. "It is felicitous you have answered our call for aid, Lord Stark. What of your consort?"

"In surgery last I heard. Also-"

Peter's practically vibrating with the effort to keep quiet, but, this, no, this requires- " _When did you meet an alien_?"

-and that is definitely an eye roll. Uncle Tony's not even looking his way, but that is almost certainly an eye roll he's feeling right now. "Remember that camping trip Stephen and I took right after your eighth birthday?"

"Yes?" Mostly Peter remembered being bummed about not getting to see the Grand Canyon and how Tony'd made up for it by letting him tag along the next time he'd business in Geneva. They'd gotten to tour the Large Hadron Collider and brought home a _lot_ of really good chocolate.

Uncle Tony gestures dramatically at the man in front of him.

"Oh! That is so _cool_."

The alien god turns to look at him and, wow, Peter's not really sure yet if guys do it for him, or girls, or any of that, but those are some big muscles and, okay, he can probably check the _would date a dude_ box now. "Lord Stark? Is this your heir?"

Uncle Tony opens his mouth, then just crooks a finger at Peter. Realizing he's been lingering in the doorway, he hurries over to the conference table and lets his mask drop. "Hi! I'm Peter!"

Thor beams at him. "Hail, Peter Antonsson. I am Thor Odinson, Crown Prince of Asgard. I look forward to the many heroic adventures we will share."

Okay, wow, make that _absolutely_ check the _go for making out with guys_ box. Please, please, let his face not be as red as it feels. "Uh-" he sputters, "It's more like Rikardsson. Well, actually it's Parker, 'cause we don't really do patronymics in the US and even if we did Uncle Tony's not my biological dad. I'm his sister-son- I mean, nephew, and... I'm just going to be quiet now."

Peter's not certain, but he thinks the woman they call _Black Widow_ is laughing at him out the corner of his eye. He doesn't dare turn around to find out for sure.

Now's probably a good time to go back to hiding behind Uncle Tony.

Just in time too because, “Stark! This is not bring your child to work day!”

“Of course not," Uncle Tony immediately says in his defense, which is gratifying even if the way he's tucking his phone back into his pocket is not. God, he filmed that whole awful exchange, didn't he? Peter's life is officially over. "Weren’t you listening? Despite some fairly disturbing conspiracy theories to the contrary, Pete’s not actually my son. He’s my apprentice. And as attached as I know you are to your scrapped boy band, Fury, you need more than five people to stop an alien invasion.”

“The Fellowship needed the armies of Rohan and Gondor to defeat Sauron, not just Sam and Frodo,“ Peter interjects helpfully before, “Right, not talking.”

Uncle Tony snorts, because he is a hateful person who lives to embarrass him, and if they survive the alien invasion Peter is never going to be able to leave his room again. “Spider-Kid has a point. JARVIS, get on the phone with Stephen and Rhodey. Tell them we have a potential emergency...If Loki has gone to all this trouble for a little iridium, he probably needs it for a stabilizing agent. Meaning the portal won't collapse on itself like it did when he arrived. They'll be able to open it as wide and and as long as Loki wants. So the question is, where is he taking the cube?”

The guy in the purple shirt who, honestly, looks like he’s been trying not to be seen, speaks up. “I’ve been working on a way to track it, but I’d welcome the help.”

“Let’s science, Doctor. Kid, you’re with me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I started this fic, I really wasn't expecting Peter to take over the POV the way he has, but whatever works, right? I also didn't plan on Peter's sudden and ridiculous man crush, but...
> 
> Also, apologies if anyone feels I'm too harsh towards SHIELD here, but I feel that any agency whose tactics are so identical to their enemy's that _nobody_ realizes they've been infiltrated by HYDRA deserves a little skepticism. Tony's working from the philosophy _the world needs them but I don't_ at this point; Happy and Pepper are a little more bloodthirsty.
> 
> With work picking back up tomorrow, expect updates to shift to 1-2 times a week.


	4. 2 May, 2015 (II)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inaugural Meeting of the Fraternal Order of Science Bros. Or, this is not Tony's first alien invasion, but that doesn't mean he's not on edge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternatively: Peter is cute, Tony is fed up, and Stephen finally shows up. 
> 
> (I tried very, very hard to wait until Wednesday to post this in an attempt to keep these more or less evenly spaced, as writing speed slows during the work week, but... obviously that didn't happen.)
> 
> Even with comic book logic at work here, I have no idea how Bruce managed 7 PhDs. Intensive internet searching has given me only limited ideas as to what they are, so for the purposes this fic (ie, mainly the science callouts) I've gone with: radiophysics (for cube tracking), nuclear physics, organic chemistry (because I think these two are actually mentioned somewhere), and nuclear medicine, and 3 who-knows-what. I'm seriously tempted to make the seventh something random like Russian Literature, because why the hell not? 
> 
> Also, per the official timeline of "Fury's Big Week", the Hulk was created c. 2003 and Harlem broken five years later, c. 2008, so that's what I'm going with here.

Determined to keep his mouth shut this time, Peter slinks after Uncle Tony and Purple Glasses Man like a puppy with its tail between its legs.

(This is probably what Aunt May meant when she said his emotional health was more important than anything else back when the school offered him the chance to skip fourth grade. Sure, he has the brains to keep up with Uncle Tony on certain subjects, but talking to people is _hard_.)

Living in Stark Tower has spoiled him, because the lab they end up in looks positively antiquated to his eyes. Peter's expertise is a little more test tubes and dissections than tracking energy signatures across the the globe, so he settles in for long day of fetching coffee and handing people things without getting to science himself. That's okay though. He should probably use the time to _prepare for the alien invasion_.

Make that _stave off a panic attack_.

Uncle Tony, of course, notices and takes a moment to ruffle his hair in a way that shouldn't be as reassuring as it is before getting on with setting up his workstation. (Peter will never get where people get off calling him self-absorbed; his uncle is one of the most selfless people he's ever met.)

"The gamma readings are definitely consistent with Selvig's reports of the Tesseract. But it's going to take weeks to process," Purple Glasses Man says, giving Peter a small smile when he offers him a blueberry from the stockpile of snacks Uncle Tony sent ahead with the rest of their equipment.

"If we bypass their mainframe and direct route to the HOMER cluster, we can clock this at around one hundred twenty petaflops."

"Heh. All I packed was a toothbrush."

"How'd you get this gig anyway? Last I heard from you, you were somewhere in Outer Mongolia."

"SHIELD tracked me down in Kolkata. I thought-"

"I sold you out? Brucie-bear, I wouldn't tell SHIELD how to find the bathroom, let alone my favorite science bro."

Peter makes a distressed noise from his perch next to the keyboard.

"You're in a class of your own, kid," Uncle Tony reassures him. "Plus, I kinda thought it would be Big Green you’d be fanboying over, not Lightning McQueen. Granted, I wouldn’t say no to those muscles either, but I’ve seen you fall asleep cuddling copies of this guy's dissertations.”

“Wait. _This_ is Doctor Banner?" Peter spins around to get a better look at Purple Glasses Man, barely noticing Tony's sudden grip on his elbow keeping him from falling off the worktop. " _You_ ’re Doctor Banner? Your research into the total synthesis of adrenal hormones is groundbreaking! I mean, it's just light years beyond what anybody else is doing right now! And your paper on using radiolocation to backtrack ground water contamination! I had to get Uncle Tony to explain most of the physics of it, but-“ Peter claps his hands over his mouth. Then lowers them. “Right, I was being quiet. Sorry.” He covers his mouth again. Then uncovers it once more. “I’m Peter Parker by the way. It’s really nice to meet you.”

Purple Glasses Man - _Doctor Bruce Banner_ \- grins more broadly at him this time. “Nice to meet you, Peter. Tony, I didn’t know you had a nephew.”

“That’s what you get for living in Outer Mongolia," Uncle Tony says strangely fondly. (Peter might - _might_ \- eventually forgive him for not saying he knew aliens, because who would believe him, but keeping silent about having met Bruce Banner? _That_ is unforgivable.) "But really, Underoos has this whole spider thing going on, you’d love it.After this is all over, you should pop by Stark Tower New York sometime. Top ten floors, all R&D. We can have a research party the likes of which bards will sing songs about for ages to come.”

“Bards?” Peter asks, voice muffled by his hands, determined not to run his mouth off this time.

Uncle Tony pulls them gently away before pointing meaningfully at the coffee maker tucked into the farthest corner. “Too old-school? Some up-and-coming young director will turn it into a biopic then?" He turns back to Doctor Banner. "They’ll get that guy from that new Harry Potter movie to play you. It’ll be great. What do you say?”

Peter thinks he's the only one who notices when Captain America enters, though how anyone can fail to notice all that red, white, and blue in the moments before he says, "You need to focus on the problem, Mr Stark," is anyone's guess.

"Do you think I'm not? Why did Fury call us in? Why now? Why not before? What isn't he telling us?"

"You think Fury's hiding something?"

"I _think_ ," Tony says with what only family would realize as great restraint, "the fact SHIELD didn’t know why Loki's people went to all this trouble for iridium is something to be worried about. They’ve been studying the cube since Howard fished it out of the ocean sixty years ago. It took Selvig less than a decade to realize you’d need it to stabilize the quantum effects, meaning...”

“Meaning," Doctor Banner finishes, "the only thing anybody’s successfully used the Tesseract for before now has been to build weapons. You think they’ve taken a leaf out of HYDRA’s book?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Captain America doesn't look convinced. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying Fury’s not telling us everything, and an intelligence organization that fears intelligence? Historically, not awesome.”

"I think Loki's trying to wind us up. This is a man who means to start a war and if we don't stay focused, he'll succeed. We have orders. We should follow them."

Tony scoffs so hard that Peter - who is _not_ hiding behind the coffee maker, he is perfectly fine with confrontation thank you very much - is honestly worried he'll break something. "Rogers, Howard Stark was my father. I grew up surrounded by Peggy Carter, the Howling Commandos, and all the stories of _you_ they loved to tell. You are not going to convince me _you_ of all people think we should blindly march to Fury's fife."

There is a terrible moment when Peter is sure his uncle is going to end up being punched in the face by a national icon. Then JARVIS, faithful JARVIS, who is faster on the draw at extracting Tony from situations that should by no means be escalated - and better about pretending he's not been listening in through every piece of Stark Tech in range - states, " _Sir, Doctor Strange has received your message and indicates he will be leaving Metropolitan General shortly._ "

Captain America starts, clearly unprepared for a future with disembodied voices-

-while Uncle Tony throws his hands into the air, shouts, "Thank the ever-loving fuck!" in exultation, and spins to face the empty space in the center of the room-

-which erupts into a ring of orange fire, carving a hole in the universe, revealing a dark, narrow room made cramped by multiple pairs of bunk beds and the occasional writing desk. A figure can be seen shifting on one of the upper bunks before-

-Uncle Stephen steps into the lab, wearing a rumbled pair of surgical scrubs and a troubled expression. "What's the emergency?" he asks, closing the _crack in reality_ with a careless gesture.

Uncle Tony lets one of his arms fall heavily while the other points vaguely in the direction of Loki's scepter - or maybe Captain America, who is still standing in front of it.

"Ah."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am doing my best to be fair to all characters here but, like Tony, I don't always remember that the Steve we're seeing now hasn't done most of the stuff it's so easy to bash him for yet. That said, I find it hilarious Captain America is all "just follow orders" in this scene when his origin story basically "look at me not following orders".
> 
> On a side note, I'm a fan of more tags versus less, so more will probably appear as this story moves along. *shrugs*
> 
> Edit: I’ve changed “600 teraflops” to “120 petaflops” to take into account advancements to computing made in this timeline.


	5. 2 May, 2015 (III)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Malevolent Magical Artifacts. Or, knowing the effects of the Mind Stone is only half the battle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternately: spiders and flies are in entirely different taxonomic classes, but Peter still ends up the unwilling arthropod on the wall for certain conversations.
> 
> (I told myself I would post this on Friday. However, my writing impulse control is, as we've already determined, poor.)

"So," Uncle Stephen continues casually, pulling a chunky two-finger ring off his hand and tucking it into the pocket of his scrubs, "is this a neuro consult," he gestures vaguely at Captain America, "or a fate of the universe thing?"

A fair portion of the tension Uncle Tony's been carrying since Cheap Suit arrived at the Tower bleeds out at his words. "Oh, just a spot of alien invasion."

"Is that all?"

Tony slouches back against the nearest workbench and pulls out his favorite tone of purposeful disregard. "Well, their ringleader has this magic staff that does a good job of recreating the Manchurian Candidate with anyone it comes in contact with, but if that's not interesting enough for you-"

"I'm sorry," Captain America snaps, jaw clenched so tight it barely moves. "Who is this?"

"Seriously?" A line of steel returns to Tony's slouch, "Am I the only one who did the reading?"

Peter, manfully, does not raise his hand, though he does think it a little unfair. Uncle Stephen had been little more than a sidebar in Uncle Tony's file, with the handwritten addendum that the profiler couldn't understand how their marriage survived both their egos. There'd been absolutely _nothing_ about magic in there - but, then again, there'd been nothing about Peter's spider abilities either.

Uncle Stephen strides across the lab. The wide lanyard bearing his hospital ID starts moving of its own accord from its place around his neck, growing and unfolding in a mind-shattering way until it's become a heavy red cape that Harry Potter would be pleased to own. His scrubs change with it, remaining his favorite dark blue but gaining an absurd number of belts and pleats. "Doctor Stephen Strange. Sorcerer Supreme.” He does not offer a hand.

“Is that supposed to mean something?"

“It means that all magic on Earth is my domain. That is a magical artifact, this is Earth, therefore whatever is going on here is my concern."

This seems perfectly reasonable to Peter, but Captain America seems determined to turn things into an argument. “And just who gave you permission-?"

“Seriously? Did you seriously just ask that?” Uncle Tony seems determined to take the bait too. Neither JARVIS or Doctor Banner are stepping up to the plate, though, so it looks like it's up to Peter to defuse the situation.

Somehow.

"Uh... I have a question?"

The adults all turn to look at him, which is when Peter realizes he's spent their confrontation inching his way up the walls until he's tucked away in the spot where the far corner meets the ceiling.

Alrighty then.

One corner of Uncle Stephen's mouth twitches up, as does the collar of his cape. "Tony?" he asks, glancing backwards.

"I know what you're going to say."

“You brought Peter.”

"I brought Peter," Tony agrees, rubbing roughly at his temples. "I thought it would be a good on-the-job learning experience. We'll put him on civilian evacuation and containment. It'll be fine."

"I'll remind you of that tomorrow," Stephen promises wryly before, "You had a question, Peter?"

“What? Oh, uh, I was just going to-” He had talked in front of crowds at Stark Expo, he can ask his uncle a question - even when his Spidey sense is screaming at him to find a darker corner, away from all the tension in the room. He can. “I mean, you’re really a wizard?”

“Master of the Mystic Arts, but you knew that.”

“I did?"

“Peter,” he says patiently, turning to examine Loki’s scepter still on the worktop behind him. His cape flutters after in the nonexistent breeze, drifting high and to one side enough to brush Uncle Tony’s arm like a dog looking for pets as Stephen passes (which Tony obliges, muttering about _handsy outerwear,_ before both pass out of reach), "you have me in your phone as _Doctor Wizard_.”

“I thought it was just your weird couple thing! I mean, it never made any sense, but Aunt Pepper said she thought you met at a costume party so I figured...”

“Oh, there were definitely costumes,” Uncle Stephen says, throwing Uncle Tony a wink over the top of the _magical alien scepter_. He misses the half-fond, half-leering smile Uncle Tony shoots him in return, adding-

“Don’t forget the haunted house.”

-as he edges away around the hard line that is Captain America standing in front of the workbench, thumbs hooked into his belt. The same anger from earlier is still there, but lessened, as if the sudden presence of Peter's _magician uncle_ has confused the narrative he's told himself and left him at a loss for how to continue.

“It is not haunted!”

“Stephen, sweetheart, you _literally_ have a-”

They never find out what Uncle Stephen supposedly has, as the doors to the lab burst open. Armed agents pour through both sides, some bearing ridiculously oversized hand canons seemingly powered by empyreal blue light.The Black Widow stands in front of one group, calm in the same way the eye of a hurricane is calm - deceptively so - and not nearly as weaponless as she appears. The Leather Pirate leads the other. He actually _is_ weaponless, but Leather Pirate doesn't seem like the sort of man who needs weapons to be dangerous. The worst bullies, Peter knows, aren't the ones that use their fists, they're the ones who use words to make even their aggression sound like the most justified of defense.

"What are you doing, Mister Stark?"

"Uhhh, kind wondering the same thing about you."

Uncle Tony moves to stand to the right of the scepter, a gauntlet forming around his outstretched hand. The repulsor in his palm hums to life with deadly potential while the other, bare, half-blocks the aisle, as if daring the agents to try to get to Doctor Banner behind him. Banner looks surprisingly grateful for this, but presses himself against the glass overlooking the hangar bay regardless, clearly as eager as Peter to avoid a fight.

At the same time Uncle Stephen straightens behind the workbench, making a movement that is almost, but not quite, like clapping his hands together. Twin ropes of orange fire burst to life around each of his forearms, crackling with power in a way no hologram they might otherwise resemble could ever hope to match. Rather than attack, he allows his arms to fall to his side - and the most self-assured look in his arsenal to find its way into his face.

“An unknown Enhanced with unquantified powers just appeared in the middle of my top secret base while it's housing a dangerous prisoner. What do you think I’m doing, Stark?”

Stephen's smirk turns positively pompous. “We’ve met, Director Fury. Or have you forgotten? If I recall correctly - and I always do - you crashed our wedding reception. Very déclassé.”

“And if _I_ recall," Leather Pirate - Director Fury - counters with a powerful glare from a one-eyed man, "you never mentioned anything about magic powers at the time.”

“Like you tell anyone all your secrets,” Tony snorts.

“Says the man whose lived the entire life in the spotlight,” Black Widow interjects, seeming unable to help herself.

“Wow. Just- Are you actually expecting me to apologize for being rich, famous, and more intelligent than you pretend to be?”

“I think the lady is asking you not to be an arrogant ass and answer the Director’s questions.”

“This lady can speak for herself, Captain."

“But this man would like some answers," Fury cuts in. "What is your purpose here, Strange?"

“You have come into procession of a malevolent magical artifact. I am here to determine its risk to this dimension and, if necessary, neutralize it."

“And by what right-?”

“Asked and answered, Fury," Uncle Tony snaps, taking a step forward. "Don’t pretend you haven’t been listening to all of us since the moment we stepped aboard.”

“And why should I trust a man whose been lying to me since the day we met?”

“That’s rich coming from-"

“Tony,” Stephen interrupts, sounding like the the few times Peter's seen him on the surgical floor. Snark as they might, such command is an air he rarely sees his uncles adopt with each other, and it cuts through Tony's train of thought accordingly.

Uncle Tony visibly gathers himself, taking a deep breath as he allows his ungauntleted hand to take up a nervous staccato on the arc reactor. “This is starting to remind me of our first date, Gandalf.”

“Not as embarrassing, I hope."

“Let’s hope not.” The tapping on the arc reactor slows. On the last lingering beat they move as one.

Nanoparticles pour from the arc reactor and assorted secondary housings, enveloping Uncle Tony in the Iron Man armor. Although he holds both arms as if to fire the repulsors, it is the flares behind his wrist which deploy, bursting from the suit and exploding with more flash than bang inches from the lines of agents.

With the agents temporarily blinded, only Peter can see Uncle Stephen finish his complicated hand movement, sending a wave of orange light out every direction at once. It expands outwards, passing harmlessly through everyone in the room until every inch of the lab is coated in a layer of pulsing Eldritch energy. At an unseen cue, it collapses, shrinking back to cover the scepter like a custom-fitted force field.

The tension in the room snaps so suddenly it’s like free fall. Hours now on the Helicarrier and finally its like Peter can breathe.

A couple of squinting agents aim their weapons at Uncle Tony and Uncle Stephen anyway, but Peter, forgotten in his corner, webs the guns from their hands before they can start to depress the triggers.

“Nice work, kid,” Tony says, letting his hands and faceplate drop. He looks paler than the situation calls for but pleased, possibly edging into the ecstatic.

Captain America rubs at his temples. “What just happened?”

“I told you, the scepter is an exceptionally malevolent magical object. I’ve neutralized its more immediate effects for the moment, but it is likely that those already effected are still in its thrall.”

“Alright,” Fury admits grudgingly, “you’re on the team.”

With a falsely saccharine smile, “I’d prefer to consult, if it’s all the same."

Fury's eye twitches, but he continues as if it doesn't. “Stark, you and I are going to have a talk later.”

“Oh, sure," Uncle Tony agrees easily, allowing the rest of his armor to retract. "Right after you fork over the penalties for all the patents you’ve violated cobbling this boat together and the names of all the shell companies you bought the rest through. My people will call your people, we'll do brunch.”

All things considered, it's probably best the bomb goes off at that moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since part of this fic involves a technological genius going back in time, I'm imagining the tech to be 5-10 years beyond what we see in _The Avengers_ and _Age of Ultron_ eras, so Mark L armor is perfectly reasonable, even if his arc reactor is still in place. This is part of the reason I went back and bumped up the FLOPS in the last chapter... 
> 
> Also, I have a lot of feelings regarding the movie version of this scene, mostly regarding the fact that Tony did not actually start arguing until Rogers started making it personal - everything before that has a level of confusion to it. This leads me to the conclusion that in addition to preventing mind control, the arc reactor somehow makes him less susceptible to the _go on, fight_ vibes the scepter is giving off, though far from immune. So long as Tony's not invested in the argument... Ditto the Time Stone for Stephen - though possibly more towards immune than not, because the actual stone is involved.
> 
> Expect a POV shift next chapter. Peter is a delight to write, but... well, part of _saving the world via time travel_ is knowing what's changed, and that's not exactly his wheelhouse at the moment.


	6. Interlude: August 1988 (I)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arrival. Or, once upon a time, two men traveled thirty years into the past in a desperate attempt to save the universe. This is how it begins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternately: 1988 is hell, or at the very least a very strange choice for mounting a defense against Thanos.
> 
> Anyone ever watch the DVD extras for _The Two Towers_? There's this bit about how the _"The Eye of Sauron now turns to Gondor......"_ scene is considered the prologue despite coming in the middle of the movie. This is like that. Although, since I hope to add more of these blasts from the past as the story goes along, it might be better to consider it the start of the second thread of storytelling a la _The Blind Assassin_... Or maybe it's more Vonnegut...

It is the knocking that wakes him, starling him out his nightmare. He doesn't know what it says about him that his dreams of the end of the world now include a knockoff Dumbledore at the far end of the universe, but it offers a bit of novelty to watching himself fail to save anything he'd ever cared about night after night, year after year, since New York. Feeling the Spider-Kid crumble to dust in his arms is one of the kinder deaths he's dreamt, at least. He didn't know his subconscious could still do mercy.

( _I don't wanna go. I don't wanna go._ )

The knocking comes again. Which is concerning, to say the least.

"FRIDAY? You're sleeping on the job, baby girl. Since when do people have to knock in this house?"

FRIDAY doesn't answer.

"Fri?"

Memories of all the times someone has used his inventions against him flash rapid-fire through his mind (Obi, Fury, Natasha, the Rogues- _the shield his father made slamming into his chest-_ ). He tries calling his nanotech, but it too fails to respond (that shouldn’t be possible, it's safe, _he_ 's safe; the technology _does not exist_ to disable it), so he reaches for the gun he’d kept at his bedside ever since Pepper-

It isn’t there either.

That’s when Tony opens his eyes.

“Young Sir,” Edwin Jarvis calls from the other side of his childhood bedroom door, “you must wake up. We need to leave within the hour if we wish to avoid the worst of the traffic when we get to Boston.”

“I’m up,” Tony shouts back, mouth working on autopilot as he stumbles towards the en suite. Lights, and- yes, he knows that face in the mirror, far too young for facial hair and thirty years out of place.

-except nothing is out of place, is it? Everything in the room is exactly as he remembers coming off the week-long haze of drugs and alcohol that had bookended his parents' funeral - the last time he'd stepped foot in the New York mansion.

-except none of his things from MIT are here he realizes, ducking back into the bedroom. None of his projects, none of the photos; not even that giant stuffed platypus Rhodes had forced on him after winning it first try from one of those _knock over the milk bottles_ booths after Tony had lost twenty bucks trying to prove physics could outwit rigged fair games their sophomore year.

“What the fuck?”

 

 

Stephen wakes with all the practice of one whose survived residency: suddenly and completely. By the time his eyes have adjusted to the light, he knows something has gone wrong. It never gets this dark in New York, which means he’s gone back further than expected. He’s been Master of the New York Sanctum for nearly two years now, which means he’s most likely returned to some point in his training at the Kamar-Taj. But why? The Ancient One may have some knowledge they can use against Thanos, but even so she’s likely to claim he’s a physical threat and as such outside the bounds of their mandate until he makes a move against the... Time... Stone...

This is not the Kamar-Taj.

It isn’t his Midtown apartment from before the accident, or even one of the on-call rooms at Metro General. No, this is his childhood bedroom in middle of nowhere, Nebraska and, if the faint snoring is any indication, he’s travelled back to a time before his older brother Vincent demanded a room of his own.

The late Eighties.

Thirty years.

He’s travelled back _thirty years_. What is he supposed to be able to do as a _preteen_ that could somehow change the fate of the universe?

Oh no.

He pulls back the sheets.

Thank the Vishanti. He doesn’t look seven years old. If anything, Stephen looks as he did on Titan, down to the leather boots with their many layers of protective enchantments. That’s something, at least. That means-

That means he can’t be here when his parents wake up. Finding grown man in their son's bed? A recipe for disaster, even if he had any identification they might possibly believe. Finding their son's bed empty, no note? Even if they don’t panic, it’ll likely turn into a kidnapping case, but should at least keep Stephen out of jail if he moves fast enough.

Decided, Stephen heads for the window and eases it open. Only after he pushes the curtains aside can he see his hands and the heavy lines of scarring that are _not_ present - but even that is only an afterthought compared to the face reflected in the glass, which is far too young for his memories and a decade too old for the time he’s found himself in.

“ _What the fuck-_?" he breathes before remembering Vincent, asleep in the next bed.

Right. He has to get out of here. He needs to figure out exactly when he is and why the Time Stone thought _this_ would mark the turning point in the war against Thanos, _then_ he can panic.

Without the Cloak, he has to jump from the window, and his seventeen-year-old body does not have the muscle memory to stick the roll. It _does_ have the manual dexterity to cast a quick spell to close the window behind him first try, which is somewhat reassuring. If he doesn’t have to start from scratch, thirty years to study might actually give them a leg up when the time comes.

Vague outline of a plan beginning to form in his mind, Stephen takes off at a jog towards the nearest farm. If he remembers correctly - and he always does - the neighbors should have a son about the age he is now with a fondness for motorcycles and a habit of leaving the barn door open. The sooner he’s out of Nebraska, the better.

 

 

By the time Jarvis is helping unpack his freshman dorm, Tony has ruled out both _deathbed flashback_ and _trauma-based hallucination_ as the cause of his current predicament and has settled on either _personal hell loop_ or _time travel_. As the second is impossible (it has to be, otherwise Dumbledore would have used his Deathly Hallow to rewind time back to before Thanos’ kids showed up, right?), the eternal torture option is in the lead. A little surprising, what with the way Tony'd always figured Hell was nothing more than a tool created by society to keep the masses in line before the days of Fox News and reality television, but clearly that’s what’s happening, because why else would he be fourteen again?

Fourteen and starting MIT again.

He'll give whoever programs these things credit: they’ve done their homework. Most people would have gone with Afghanistan when picking a memory to turn into his own personal hellscape and they’d be right as far as physical pain goes. Even Pepper - the Pepper of his time, not the one who’s seven fucking years old in this one - would probably have picked Obie or Killian or the Civil War, but 1988...

In 1988, his parents are alive. His father hasn’t shown interest in him that wasn't manufactured for the cameras in the better part of a decade. His mother has been emotionally distant for nearly as long, suffering from what he can see with the dubious benefits of hindsight and experience as fairly crippling major depression. He’s about to start a school where the average student is half a decade his senior and _no one_ takes him seriously - not his classmates, not his professors, _nobody_ \- until he starts shoving his genius down their throats with a no holds barred academic offensive of research projects, scholarly articles, and keynote speeches, after which there will be nothing but jealousy and hatred. (His undergraduate degrees had been a product of three years of self-medication with every drug he could get his hands on in a desperate attempt to slow his mind enough to make sense to the world around him... and the four that had followed were worse still.)

In 1988, Tony Stark had no power, no respect, no wealth that didn’t come directly from his father.

In 1988, Tony Stark was _nothing_ and he’d spend the next thirty years killing himself trying to prove otherwise.

“Young Sir, are you well?” Jarvis asks, tucking the last of his clothes into the dresser and startling him out of his thoughts.

“I’m fine, Jarv. Just thinking.”

“It’s alright to be nervous.”

“I’m not-“ he begins automatically, but this is Jarvis. _Jarvis_ , who was a better father to him than Howard ever dream of being and a better friend than three-quarters of his former teammates. It doesn’t matter if this a landscape designed to torture him for the rest of eternity, some things just don’t change. “I’m terrified.”

“You are more than prepared for university, Young Sir. You have nothing to fear in that regard.”

Tony doesn’t - he didn’t, not then and certainly not now, but for all he remembers being thirty years older, some part of him must still be fourteen. “What if nobody likes me?”

“Categorically impossible,” Jarvis says so definitively Tony doesn’t have room to be embarrassed.

“It’s happened before.”

“No one who ever truly knows you could possibly hate you, Young Sir. Might I suggest giving them the opportunity?”

That is... not completely terrible advice. He'd few true friends in his life, but those he had let close... Rhodey had stuck by his side through palladium poisoning, Leipzig, and Tony's original teenage years. Pepper, to his eternal surprise, had agreed to _marry_ him. And Peter-

( _I don't wanna go. I don't wanna go._ )

“Can I call you while I’m here?” he asks. If his voice cracks, it's only because puberty is a cruel and terrible thing.

“If you ever need anything-"

“No, not if I need anything. Just to talk. Say hello. Let you know about all the friends you think I’ll be making.”

Jarvis' voice goes as soft as he's ever heard it. “I’d be honored.”

He must still be getting used to the hormones, because Tony finds himself leaping off the bed and pulling Jarvis into a bone-crushing hug the likes of which would put Thor to shame.

“Look after yourself, Anthony.”

This might be Hell, but that's never stopped him from trying to fix things before.

 

 

He’s parking the stolen motorcycle in front of a bar two counties over by the time the sun starts to rise. There’s only one business open, but beggars can’t be choosers, so he walks in to the feed store with as sheepish an expression as he can manage.

A man thirty or forty years older than Stephen is used to being sits behind the counter, the lower half of his face hidden behind a copy of the _World-Herald_ so fresh each rustle of the pages leaves black smears across the newsprint. After several minutes, the scraggly lines of the man's eyebrows lunge for his receding hairline - the only outward sign he gives that he's paying attention to his business at all. “It’s a little early for Halloween.”

The fields he'd passed had narrowed Stephen's arrival to late summer, but it's remarkably reassuring to have this at least somewhat verified. “Woke up like this in a field a couple miles back - I’m pretty sure it’s my buddy’s idea of a joke. Any chance you know where I can catch a ride back to Omaha?”

The old man studies him with the eye of a man who's raised many teenage boys. “Is this a Greek Week thing?”

“ _Yes_. This is absolutely a Greek Week thing.”

The suspicious scrunch to the old man's brow lessens. “Well, you’re in luck. My youngest is going into the city to pick up some supplies on special order. I can have him pop by here and pick you up first.”

“Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.”

The man huffs and shuffles towards his backroom, presumably to make the call. Only when he can hear the muffled sound of voices does Stephen dare glance at the date on the paper: Friday, August 26, 1988.

And there, directly below, tucked away on page six of the _Omaha World-Herald_ , is the headline _STARK PRODIGY TO ATTEND MIT,_ complete with a black-and-white photograph of a boy far too doe-eyed to be the man Stephen met thirty years in the future.

Well then. Perhaps the Time Stone knew what it was doing after all.

Boston it is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts? I'm thinking there will be one more August 1988 chapter before we get back to the events of A1. Then we'll have another few chapters from "present day" before we get hit with another blast from the past.
> 
> Also, I hate how every major event in the MCU is supposed to happen at the same time, or on the same day in May, so for the purposes of my OT (Original Timeline), Stephen's accident was in in February 2015 and the events that lead to him becoming Sorcerer Supreme c. December 2016. I've also put A3 in October of 2018, because _not all invasions happen on the first week of May_.


	7. Interlude: August 1988 (II)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Second First Meetings. Or, what Stephen meant by 0.000007% chance of success.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternately: In which Tony reevaluates his hypothesis, but even after Stephen's confession his plans remain pretty much the same.
> 
> (This chapter is brought to you in part by _Now That's What I Call 80s Hits_ and, with full irony, _I met you when I was 18. (the playlist)_. Sadly, there is no karaoke.)

By Monday, Tony is beginning to have doubts about his _customized hell loop_ scenario. Yes, it’s still the Eighties and, yes, some asshole upperclassman actually shoved him into a wall on his way out of Baker this morning, but otherwise things are going surprisingly well. He’s met Rhodey again and, thanks to his memories being a marginally well-adjusted adult (instead of a teenage super-genius who had somehow yet to figure out not all attention is worth while, fuck you _National Enquirer_ ), is already getting along with his once-and-future best friend far better than he had at this point in the past. Even his tentative plan to gain back some of the reputation he’s lacking in this time period is starting to bear fruit. Three days in and it’s already a banner week.

Tony doesn’t trust it.

If this is truly a hellscape, shouldn’t things be going more wrong? Call him suspicious, but the fact he’s able to change as much as he has would indicate that this is not, in fact, Hell.

But if not eternal damnation, then what? Time travel? The idea that _he_ of all people would ever be chosen to go back in time and save the universe is not only fantastical and outlandish, it is _patently insane_.

But what other explanation is there?

He’d initially discounted the hypothesis that this was nothing more than a hallucination caused by the random firing of synapses as he died, but perhaps it’s time to revisit the idea: Thanos had stabbed him. The blood loss combined with his probable head injury could be creating some very vivid dreams, and Tony _had_ been planning on sitting down with Peter and having a frank discussion about the importance of not letting Spider-Man get in the way of college before the alien donut had shown up in the sky over Greenwich Village. It is entirely possible that his dying mind had seized on his hopes for Peter at MIT and turned them into a strange reflection of his own days there.

Even presuming any of that is true - which it isn't, - that would make this an awful detailed hallucination. And a long one. In Tony's experience, hallucinations don’t generally include details like eating and sleeping. (Granted, _Tony_ had not actually slept since waking up in 1988, but _Rhodey_ had and hallucinations of other people probably didn’t waste time on that either.)

Which brings him back to time travel and no. Just, no. That is so improbable that even if it _weren’t_ impossible it might as well be.

Tony had tried to save the world, but the world hadn’t wanted to be saved. Aliens had invaded New York and everyone refused to believe it could happen again. They called him paranoid - a half-mad warmonger desperately trying to pass himself off as a hero - and he here he was, six years later (twenty-four years earlier), having watched everything he’d feared come to pass.

So, no, Tony is a bad choice for saving the world.

He gives vague consideration to this being an actual psychological break, but has yet to determine a way to either prove or disprove this by the time he hears the jiggle of the doorknob behind him. And-

Wait.

That's not right.

Rhodey is meant to be at some ROTC _welcome to the Air Force, this is how the next four years of your life are going to go_ thing until late, so Tony is supposed to have hours yet to turn his _cutting edge for 1988_ computer into something that he can use without breaking out in hives without having to deal with awkward questions about _revolutionizing the personal computer industry in his freshman dorm room_. None of this dorm-mates have tried to enter uninvited since he threatened to tase the last one, and MIT had always been remarkably good at keeping paparazzi out of campus buildings during his original tenure. There is exactly no one who should be at his door.

(Tony feels like someone carved another hole in his chest without his AI. FRIDAY or JARVIS, it doesn't matter, neither would have ever let anyone dangerous get this close. This may be a pre-Iron Man world, but all Tony can see is enemies at his door.)

Naturally, Tony's response to this is to grab his taser, throw open the door on the would-be intruder, and-

Wait.

He _knows_ the person trying to rake their way past his Grade 1 ANSI deadbolt with narrow bands of fiery light and a frustrated expression. The lock-picking is new, but the magic is unmistakable.

"Strange?"

 

Stephen's original plan had been been this: _there had been no future in which they won_. By the time Thanos reached Titan, there was no way forward that did not end in the death of half the universe followed by a fair portion of the rest in the resulting chaos. Oh, there were some futures where the survivors managed to kill Thanos, destroy the Gauntlet, and scatter the Infinity Stones so that they could never be used in such a way again, but by then it had been too late.

 _No civilization had survived the Snap._ Some fell quickly, like the Maya; others disintegrated gradually, like the Romans; all, however, fell. With the loss of half their populations, few sapients could continue as they had. (On Earth, the average human-being no longer knew how to grow their own food. While that information could be found in various media, those who had access to all the requisite parts - knowledge, fertilizer, seeds, pesticides, manpower, water - were few as governments and supply chains collapsed. Anarchy reigned as people sought to fulfill most basic needs - and this story repeated with minimal variation across every inhabited world in the universe.)

Within two dozen years, most spacefaring civilizations had disappeared. Within two hundred, there was nothing left that any anthropologist alive today would call a complex society at all.

_The Snap would cause devastation on a level that Thanos, with his myopic goals, could not even begin to imagine._

And that was okay. Societies collapse, species go extinct, people die. Life is tenacious. It finds other ways. Given enough time, other civilizations would arise. Their dimension would recover.

_But theirs was not the only dimension._

_There would not be enough time_.

Thanos might have been the latest threat to face Earth since supervillians - and the heroes to match them - started crawling out of the woodwork ten years ago, but he would not be the last. The Multiverse was filled with creatures who, seeing this dimension's temporary weakness, would seek to make it their own. At that point it failed to matter which enemy they faced: _their dimension would fall_.

 _But that was only if they moved_ forward _._

With the Eye of Agamotto, Stephen had the ability to reverse time. If he went backwards to a point before Thanos' children arrived on Earth, the chance that they could better protect the Stones they had increased exponentially. _If Earth's defenders could keep Thanos from gaining Time and Mind, ultimately it did not matter what happened to the planet because the dimension would survive._

But even the Eye was only so powerful. Reversing time did not change the fact that planets move through space as well. The Time Stone could compensate for this locally, but unless Stephen wanted to perish in deep space, the only way to get from Titan _then_ to Earth _before_ was to utilize the Space Stone as well.

So when Tony Stark had asked him how many futures they had won, he'd spoken of the one in which he could trick Thanos into taking the booby trapped Stone. If he fought them for it, he would be unlikely to imagine they'd safeguard it in other ways - and too pleased at having all-but-achieved his goal to examine it in detail before adding it to the Gauntlet. Once that happened, all they had to do was wait for him to use it, which would automatically trigger the failsafe and lead to-

"-our arrival in this time," Stephen finishes, gesturing (somewhat inadequately, to his mind) at the room around them. For all dormitory rooms will change very little in thirty years, there's still a Macintosh II on the desk in front of him - albeit a highly-modified one, its guts still spilt open in various stages of upgrade. For a titan of industry like Stark, it's probably as good as a flashing neon sign toward their exact place in the timeline.

Stark is silent in the immediate aftermath of his explanation, solemn and weary in the same way he had been in the front hall of the New York Sanctum less than a week before. At the time, it had been almost reassuring to see the famously flippant businessman taking the oncoming threat so seriously. Now, it's frankly disturbing coming from a fourteen-year-old.

Stephen is starting to wonder if he hasn't made a mistake being as honest as he has when Stark nods with the air of a king reaching great judgment. "Two questions," he says.

"Only two?"

Stark narrows his eyes. As Stark at fourteen looks less like the man who'd be known as _Earth's Greatest Defender_ and more like a small woodland creature, Stephen has a hard time finding this as threatening as he knows it should be. Fourteen or not, this man has made a god _bleed_. (In several timelines, he'd strike the killing blow.) When he's found nothing more than brusque surprise in Stephen's words, he continues, "Why 1988?"

"It was chosen by the Time Stone, presumably because it marks a turning point in the war with Thanos. I'm not yet sure as to how."

"Alright. Question two: why pick _me_ for this excellent adventure of yours? I'm sure Hogwarts has any number of people who could help you on your quest, or Asgard."

"Careful, that movie doesn't come out until next February. And - I didn't. I- I expected to be completely alone. That I am not is an immense weight off my shoulders. When I realized how far back I’d come, I worried I resigned myself to Cassandra’s fate and doomed the universe alongside."

At some point during his explanation ( _confession_ , his subconscious supplied, drowning under the weight of all that remained unsaid) Stephen had sat on the bed nearest Stark's desk. The other man had made no comment at the time, save to push some wiring out of easy reach. Now he leans across the narrow space between them and clasps his shoulder.

There is still much left to discuss, but it feels like benediction.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter wraps up this interlude section. We'll get back to the past after the battle, but for now... back to 2015.
> 
> (By "that movie comes out next year", I mean _Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure_ , as that comes out in 1989. It's close enough to the time they're in now that Stephen felt Tony might have thought it already came out, whereas the HP references are clearly a decade off at the very least.)
> 
> (On a completely different note, I just finished watching the s3e1 of _The Grand Tour_ , and cannot help but think it would be a thing of beauty if Tony Stark were ever to appear on that show. But, alas, I draw the line at pulling real people into my fic.)


	8. 2 May, 2015 (IV)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Heist. Or, never leave your MacGuffin unprotected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternately: Stephen and Peter get to be BAMF and Tony gets to play mechanic.
> 
> Today, 1/31/19, marks my tenth year writing for fandom - my fanfic-iversary, if you will. Ten years ago I posted the first chapter of an HP fic on FF.net, and while that will probably never get the edit it desperately needs for me not to blush when its mentioned, I gained much from that experience and the fic that followed. I felt the need to commemorate that somehow... so you get the longest chapter yet. This is not quite the one I'd planned, but I think that might be for the better.

The world explodes around them.

The suit reforms before Tony hits the deck, encasing him in a protective layer of nanotech that will hopefully keep him from adding another concussion this year's count. He's on his feet again almost instantly, eyes going up to-

-Peter, terrified but safe, webbed into the his corner in a way that would be hilarious in any other situation-

-and right to-

-Stephen, shaken but unharmed, floating an inch or two above the flooring thanks to the Cloak-

-and behind to-

-Bruce, bleeding from half-a-dozen places from flying glass, but tucked safely in his own corner and _not green_. Several agents are down, including Fury, but-

"We're losing altitude."

"External detonation," Hill tells him, either unsurprised by his sudden presence on SHIELD's internal comms or wise enough to save her questions until after the danger's passed. "Number three engine is down. Turbine's mostly intact, but repairs are impossible while airborne. Somebody's going to have to get outside and patch it."

"On it." Tony fires up the repulsors.

The agents who are able are already scrambling to deal with the perimeter breach, but they'd have been of limited help - these are security forces, not techs, and this is a technical job. Rogers had sufficed in the original timeline, but there had always been a better choice; since he isn't actively dealing with any of his anger management issues at the moment, "Bruce, see if you can't get at the controls from the inside. I'll meet you there."

Bruce takes a deep breath and, nodding slightly, hurries off towards the bowels of the ship.

"Steph-"

Stephen waves him off, already in full doctor-mode. "Peter and I will protect the scepter. Go!"

 

 

Stephen watches Tony leap through the broken window and speed off into the sky from the corner of his eye. Thirty years have hardly dulled his husband's penchant for dramatics, but they have somewhat inured Stephan to them. Besides, the explosion left several people injured. His attentions are better spent with them.

"How is he?" Romanoff asks. In between directing the agents capable of it to secure the detention level, she's managed to unearth a generously sized first aid kit. She drops it to the floor beside him without ceremony, though is careful to keep it from bumping against his patient.

His patient - Director Fury - has been unconscious since the blast, but the wound is closed and pulse steady. "Stable for now, but he'll need a CT and MRI to rule out hemorrhage or hematoma."

"He's not going to get that here. The magnetic field interferes with our guidance systems."

"Then I suggest getting him to a hospital," Stephen informs her, already moving on to his next patient. This one _is_ bleeding, but she's conscious and the skull fracture appears relatively minor. It will require stitches, but further treatment should be able to wait until after the battle to come.

A quick glance shows that the next most critical injury is a possible ulnar fracture. "Gloves," he tells the Cloak and tries not to delight in the way Steve Rogers flinches as it retrieves a pair from the first aid kit on its own along with a suture kit and needle driver - everything he needs but anesthetic. "You're learning." 

The Cloak puffs with pride before settling back around his shoulders. If magical artifacts could take nursing exams, The Cloak of Levitation might almost make a passible assistant in the OR.

Rogers studies them both warily. "Can't you just transport him to one?"

"Not while we're in uncontrolled descent. Now, Agent-"

"Dunne," the woman offers. Her eyes - a startling shade of storm grey - are already less glazed than they were five minutes before.

"Agent Dunne, I'm going to clean and sew your wound now, but I need you to be as still as possible. Can you do that for me?"

"Yes, Doctor."

"Good."

 

 

Captain America and Black Widow have already left for the detention area by the time Peter finishes cutting himself free of his webbing, leaving Peter and Stephen to guard the scepter as promised.

Only, Peter's seen a lot of movies - _a lot_ a lot of movies - and this? This doesn't feel like a prison break. For folks supposedly planning an alien invasion, Loki's people are wasting a lot of time and manpower making a big, flashy play to free their evil overlord.

Which means this isn't _just_ a prison break. And since they've currently got his Glowstick of Destiny on lockdown, that means chances are it's probably also a heist movie - and the doors to their treasure room are wide open.

With Uncle Stephen busy doctoring, Peter decides that it's up to him to shore up their defenses.

He drops from the ceiling in front of the first set of lab doors. Cascading power losses have left them locked open, but a couple strong tugs are enough to force them closed. It's far from perfect, but it will slow down anyone trying to get in.

“Peter, what are you doing?” Uncle Stephen asks when he gets to a stopping point with the female agent. His cape helps her to lean against one of the workbenches while he himself drags the first aid kit over to the burly man holding his arm close to his chest.

“Securing the treasure room. I mean, there’s nothing I can do about the window, but at least if anyone comes they’ll have to break through the doors or climb.”

“Good idea." Despite the situation, Peter beams. "Finish that, then have the Cloak help you move Fury to the back of the room in case our attackers do come here. Be careful of his head when you do - I may not care for him, but I would prefer not to see him dead, or even brain dead."

“Yes, Uncle Stephen!”

He bounds over to the second set of doors-

-and slides straight through them as the ship lists heavily to one side. Even with his powers, Peter is barely able to keep himself from crashing into the far wall.

That's probably not good.

“Any time now, Anthony,” he hears Uncle Stephen mutter just loud enough for Peter's enchanted senses to make it out over the groan of metal as the Helicarrier takes an increasingly alarming tilt.

Peter scrambles back to the doors in away that would have been impossible before the spider bite. He can just make out the others-

-Uncle Stephen and the burly male agent held in place by the super cool cloak, its collar showing signs of strain as it struggles to keep them from sliding through the broken window-

-the woman, Dunne, clinging to the workbench she’d been leaning against, pale but far from panicking-

-Director Fury, still out cold, nearly slamming into bench still holding the scepter before a thread of orange fire catches his ankle, a wet red trail marking his path-

-but trusts their safety to Uncle Stephen. If Loki does escape and get his scepter back, the whole world is in trouble.

Only, with gravity working against them, the doors refuse to budge. Which is bad because the door to the far stairwell has just burst open, revealing Loki and four of his heavily-armed cohort, none of which seem particularly effected by the way gravity and the ground no longer align.

"Not good! Not good! Not good!" Peter shouts in increasing alarm as Loki blocks each burst of web peter tries to use to block their progress. “Uncle Stephen, are you sure you can’t get those people out of there?”

“We’re going to have to risk it,” he says and tears another hole in the fabric of reality, this one near Dunne’s feet. “Jump!”

Dunne does and the rift closes behind her. A second opens near the male agent-

-before an arrow comes flying at Peter from down the hallway. He manages to avoid it, just barely, but slides away from the doors in the process. He skids to a stop halfway down its length, less because of his powers and more because Uncle Tony has finally got the engine back online, but there’s no time to appreciate this because then Loki’s minions are racing towards him, weapons in hand.

"Not good! Not good! Not good!"

 

 

Loki appears in the doorway.

It would be wrong to say he appears unhinged, but there is something wild and chaotic in his eyes when he waves a hand and lets loose a wave of raw magic.

The blast slams Stephen and Director Fury, who he’d been about to evacuate, into the far wall. Stephen's robes shield him from the worst of the damage; Director Fury’s leather coat does not, but there's no time to worry about other people's chest wounds when Loki is still casting.

The alien mage conjures a dozen daggers and sends them flying.

Stephen transfigures them into a flock of pale green butterflies before they can strike their targets and retaliates by calling upon a whip of pure energy to snare his dominant casting hand.

This should stall Loki. At the very least, it should annoy him. Instead, he smiles like Stephen has just pulled a stuffed rabbit from a hat as the skin beneath the spell turns glacial blue. The color expands like ink in water, creeping up one side and down the other as is eyes flash - first carmine, then cobalt - before fading to their previous steel.

(“ _He sent Loki. The attack on New York. That's him_ ,” Banner had told them in a different future, but he hadn’t said a word about _mind control_.)

Ice radiates from the frost giant now looming in the center of the lab.

The deck plating, having just righted itself, groans under this new abuse. Stephen aims a blast at it, hoping to trap Loki on the floor below, but before he can loose the spell something even more unexpected happens:

Frost starts creeping up his energy whip as if it were an actual, physical thing. The magic snaps and hisses in protest as its familiar golden sparks flash-freeze under the onslaught. The casting shatters, freeing Loki, but not before coating Stephen in a layer of hoarfrost that even the Cloak cannot protect him from.

His hands, not yet burdened by metal pins, warm quickly, but not quickly enough. By the time he can move his fingers again, Loki is reaching for the staff-

-only to rear back as his hand touches the protective barrier around it. The scent of charred skin fills the lab, but Loki ignores his injury entirely. Instead he offers Stephen another indulgent smile and says, “You have fought well, sorcerer, but you are outmatched. Release your spell and you will live long enough to pledge yourself to my master.”

“Thanks, but no thanks. Servitude isn’t really my style." Unable to help himself, he continues, "Didn’t think it was yours either.”

"The might of Thanos is never-ending. His armies stretch across the galaxies in search of his prize and leave not but wrath and ruin in their wake," the blue leeches from Loki's skin. The man that remains looks tired and desperate in ways Stephen knows far too well, from mirrors and psych rotations alike. "Limited as you are, your skill is such that he will spare you if you agree to serve him. Remove your protection and kneel, or make peace with your gods. The choice is yours.”

“Go ahead and kill me. I’ll enjoy watching you try to remove a dead man's spell from the afterlife,” Stephen taunts, readying the sling ring to open a portal behind him.

Naturally, this is when Agent Barton hauls a bloodied and bruised Peter in from the hall. He's breathing. The cuts on his face are already healing. In a day, it would be impossible to tell he'd ever been injured at all-

-but his mask is gone. The protective armor around his throat is gone. His neck is bare beneath Barton's chokehold and not even superhuman regenerative abilities can repair a catastrophic cervical fracture.

“Let’s try this again, shall we: release your spell, mortal, or the child dies.”


	9. 2 May, 2015 (V)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Footage. Or, Tony does not like what he sees at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternatively: Tony gets his chance to be BAMF. Kinda.
> 
> (Somehow, I don't feel as if this is angsty enough, but know that I tried. I also intended to make this one longer, but then I realized the sections worked better on their own, and I wanted to post the first bit too much to wait to write the rest.)

Tony had forgotten about the evil minions.

In his defense, it's been over thirty years. The original invasion had happened in 2012; six years later, Thanos had attacked and Stephen had used the Time Stone to send them back to 1988 for reasons they could still only guess at. Tony can hardly be expected to remember every detail of a fight that had happened thirty-three years ago, particularly when he'd spent much of it playing pinball inside the engine rotors.

He does feel bad about it though. Bruce doesn't like being put in situations where the Hulk might want to make an appearance. In that, Rogers might still have been the better choice to assist, for all he knows as much about circuitry as the average doberman knows about nuclear fusion.

(That's unkind. Tony knows it's wrong to judge a man on actions he will _never_ be given the chance to make, but seeing him in that uniform is like seeing _the shield his father made slamming into his chest_ -)

( _He's my friend_.)

( _So was I_.)

"You alright?"

"I will be. No injuries," Bruce hurries to explain as Tony's faceplate snaps up, searching for wounds JARVIS might not have enough sensor data to have picked out on his first pass. "Just, the Other Guy doesn't like being shot at; fighting the change can be even more exhausting than going through with it."

"He's just protective. I don't like it when people shoot at my friends either."

"I'm pretty sure that the Other Guy cares for me even less than I do him."

"Hey," he clapped Bruce's shoulder lightly, "remember what I said when I tracked you down in Greenland? That much gamma exposure should have killed you."

"And I'll tell you what I told you then: the Hulk saving my life? It's a nice sentiment, but," he gestures at the twisted metal wreckage all around them, some of it still smoldering, "what did he save it for?"

"This, maybe."

Bruce actually chuckles. It is not a comforting sound. "The Avengers, you mean? I've seen stabler nitrations of glycerol!"

The resulting bark of laughter tears itself from Tony's throat with such force he's surprised not to taste blood. "No arguments there. But you don't need to buy into the branding to do good things."

"I was doing good things in Kolkata."

"Then help us make sure there's a Kolkata for you to go back to."

"I-"

Captain America's voice breaks in over the intercoms, " _Stark, we have a situation._ "

"You've got to be kidding me. Did nobody show that guy how to work a headset? Or is the DAS down too? Please let it be the the DAS, because I refuse to work with a man who still thinks vacuum tubes are the be-all, end-all in electronics," he rants at Bruce as he makes his way to the push-to-talk monstrosity mounted near the door. "Stark here. Please tell me that our Bound God is still doing his performance art piece for Fury's _Silence of the Lambs_ tribute."

Rodgers, to his credit, only pauses briefly before continuing. " _No can do. Seems Loki can make illusions of himself appear and disappear at will. Natasha and I chased one of them through the research levels before it turned to smoke when we finally caught up._ "

"And Thor?" 

" _Trapped in the cage when Loki escaped. Coulson's working on getting him out without dropping him into the sea. But Stark - we think Loki's going after the scepter._ "

Tony knows this. In the original timeline, he had, unimpeded by its scattered defenders. With the benefit of time travel, he and Stephen know better now, despite being forced to rely on Tony's spotty memories of the events leading to the Infinity War.

Tony knows Loki's scepter contains the Mind Stone. He does not know why Thanos had sent the fallen prince with one of his prizes in a foolish and, ultimately, futile attempt to obtain another, only that he had.

He also knows that, ultimately, none of this matters. Whatever Loki had done _then_ has little to no bearing on what he does _now_. The fact that the invasion is happening in 2015 instead of 2012 is proof enough that _something_ \- something utterly beyond his ken - has changed. What this means for Loki and his plans remains to be seen.

Stephen and Peter are protecting the scepter. Stephen is the Sorcerer Supreme. He has bested Loki before. And Peter-

( _I don't wanna go. I don't wanna go._ )

His faceplate slams into place before he's conscious of making the decision. Then he's roaring out of the hole in the engine room, cursing the idiot who decided it was necessary to make an aircraft carrier _fly_. Even Howard, bull-headed as he was, had given up on getting a _car_ to fly by the time he married Tony's mother.

"JARVIS, get me eyes on the scepter."

" _I'm sorry, Sir, but video surveillance in that section is inoperable, as are most other non-essential systems._ "

"What about the feed from Peter's suit?"

The UI is flooded by disjointed images that take a moment to resolve into Peter, fighting hand-to-hand in the hallway outside the laboratory; Peter, tripping up three but being caught up by a fourth; Peter, being dragged by the neck back into the lab-

"JARVIS, forget subtly. Do whatever you need to do to get surveillance back up in that room. We'll deal with the fallout later." For a bunch of spies, SHIELD can be awfully sanctimonious about other people having a look at their systems - but Tony doesn't care, not anymore, not when Peter's _life_ is at stake.

The shaky suit feed is replaced by that of a wide-angled lens opposite the action.

" _Let’s try this again, shall we,_ " Loki says on the video feed, gesturing grandly at Stephen as if Peter weren't paling rapidly just a few steps away, " _release your spell, mortal, or the child dies._ "

On the screen, Stephen drops the forcefield.

Loki's grin turns positively Cheshire as he reaches for the unprotected scepter - and decidedly manic after it is in his hands. " _I knew we could reach some accord. Never let it be said a Prince of Asgard failed to honor his word._ " He turns the full force of his smile upon Barton, who's too mind-controlled to be properly terrified by the number of teeth showing. " _Release the boy. Kill the rest._ "

“ _No_!” Peter cries and tightens his grasp on the arm already loosening its hold on his neck. Webbing sputters from near-empty shooters-

Stephen slams his wrists together on the edge of the feed. Brilliant Tao Mandalas the color of Mexican opals flare into existence around each of his fists, ready and raised to-

A second surveillance feed pops open on Tony's UI, smaller than the first but large enough to show Rogers and Romanoff bursting through the doors of the stairwell nearest the lab. Romanoff goes straight for the stirring minions at the far end of the hall, pulling cable ties from somewhere in her skintight uniform, but Rogers raises his shield-

-as Tony bursts through the open hangar bay doors, aiming his repulsors at Loki-

-who turns, the smirk on his face never faltering as he lifts the scepter in mock salute and steps into shadow, living up to the name _Sky-treader_ as he disappears from the Helicarrier-

-just as his father's shield passes through the space where he'd been. It careens into the workbench and ricochets towards Stephen-

-who catches it in a series of portals, looping it back toward Rogers even as he rushes across the room to Peter-

-who's on the ground, seizing, apparently having decided the best course of action was to utilize the last of his taser webs while _connected to his attacker._

( _I don't wanna go. I don't wanna go._ )

( _Save me! Save me!_ )

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) A nitration of glycerol is nitroglycerin, which is a notoriously unstable explosive.  
> 2) A DAS is a distributed antenna system, i.e., how you get cell signals in subway stations or, in this case, internal communications on flying spy ships.  
> 3) Transistors started replacing vacuum tubes in 1947.  
> 4) Greek gods have epithets; Norse ones have kennings, of which one of Loki's actually is "The Bound God". "Sky-treader" is another. Some other interesting ones are "Breaker of Worlds", "Father of Strife", and "The Man with the Tattered Smile" according to the most reputable website I could find.  
> 5) Apparently, it _is_ possible to be tasered second hand. Also, you may catch fire if sprayed with tear gas before hand.


	10. 2 May, 2015 (VI)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heroes. Or, we are what we pretend to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternately: If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we aren’t really living.
> 
> Or, to quote my favorite time travel fic, "Of a Linear Circle" by flamethrower, _“We are all who we were, and we are all who we become.”_

It takes Peter a long time to be able to think past _the YouTube videos seriously undersold how much that hurts_.

It takes Peter even longer to process what Uncle Stephen is objurgating even as he untangles him from Evil Archer Guy and helps him through vagal maneuvers. He can't quite follow the exact wording, but the gist seems to be _that spider gave you permanent tachycardia and tasers can cause arrhythmias even in healthy patients, what were you thinking, I did not trade away the scepter to keep you alive just to watch you kill yourself in front of me_.

He's vaguely aware of moving - of Uncle Tony lifting him under his armpits like he's still a little kid and placing him atop the workbench that had held Loki's scepter. His feet dangle what feels like miles off the floor and, though his every sense is screaming at him to run from the confrontation that is surely coming, nothing feels quite real.

"I don't think I want to do that again."

"You won't," Uncle Tony promises, brushing the hair from his face and pressing a kiss to his forehead, "because you are grounded forever."

"Oh, good," Peter agrees faintly and lets his head slump forward onto Uncle Tony's shoulder. His arms come up to wrap around him automatically. "It would be really nice if the room would stop spinning now."

Uncle Tony starts to say something - or, at least, that's what it feels like - only to be cut off by Captain America demanding-

"What the hell was that?"

Peter struggles to sit up, to explain that he hadn't _meant_ to hurt himself, but he couldn't just let Evil Archer Guy _kill_ everyone. Only, none of his muscles want to cooperate with himself or each other, so he just sort of whimpers pitiably.

Apparently, the question wasn't meant for him anyway, because Uncle Stephen answers from somewhere off to the side. "I'm afraid you'll have to be more specific. Given your background and education before you spent seventy years in the North Atlantic, I imagine very little of anything that has happened today is within your comprehension."

"You were supposed to be guarding the scepter."

"And you were supposed to keep Loki encaged. It appears we both failed in our missions, Mister Rogers."

Captain America's voice hardens. "You also said that Director Fury would be fine, _Doctor_."

"I said that he was _stable_ , which he was before being struck in torso with raw magics. I may be a sorcerer, but even I am not capable of miracles." There is a rustling of fabric. "Now, unless you've any _sensible_ questions, I should inform Director Hill of her promotion."

Peter makes the mistake of turning then, ignoring Uncle Tony's whispered entreaty not to and-

 _Oh_.

That's a lot of blood.

 _A lot_ a lot of blood.

Uncle Tony moves then, stepping very deliberately between Peter and the body. He stays there until Peter has wherewithal to turn away, though the seething visage of Captain America is debatably better.

It's also somewhat baffling, at least to Peter, to whom everything is still tinged with a taste of the unreal. Yes, Director Fury is dead and, yes, it's sad, but it's not _Uncle Stephen_ 's fault. He's a doctor. He takes his oath to do no harm very, _very_ seriously - and even if he didn't, yelling at him won't change anything.

"We're not finished here, Strange."

Uncle Stephen doesn't stop, let alone acknowledge Captain America has spoken. He just strides straight through the lab doors with white knuckles and clenched jaw.

Uncle Tony watches him leave, face inscrutable. Then he turns deliberately towards the man in the bright suit and says, voice like smoke, "Listen here, Rogers. I don’t know what line Fury was feeding you, but _no one_ here answers to you. You don’t _lead_ anything. Everyone in this room - except for Peter, who is an actual child - has lived longer and fought more battles than you. The _only_ reason you're here is because you had the good fortune _not_ to die after allowing the man whose one clinical success was the _Red Skull_ and my own sodden, strutting excuse for a father to use you as a lab rat."

"Your father was a great man."

"My father was an overbearing, pompous bigot whose last act in life was to strike my mother before getting behind the wheel with a bottle of Glenfiddich. But, _please_ , tell me how that makes him such a good man."

"At last he wasn't pretending to be something he's not. I've seen the footage. You're no hero."

"I never claimed to be," Uncle Tony scoffs. "All I am is a guy trying to do some good in the world whatever way he can. Sometimes that means putting on a show on stage, but bright now it means finding out where Loki is taking that scepter. Bruce, don't just stand there in the doorway, this is your science party too. Did your program manage to find anything?"

"Uh, let me check," Doctor Banner says, looking just about as uncomfortable as Peter feels as he eases his way into the room, edging around everything and everyone to reach the main computer terminal. "No, not yet. I can tell you the signature is largely confined to the Northern Hemisphere, but I'm seeing reading's all over the place - Western Europe, Southern Asia, nearly all of North America - but it will take time to shift through the noise."

"I don't think we have time for your calculations, Doctor. Loki's on the move. He could start the invasion at any time."

Uncle Tony makes an unhappy noise and slumps on the workbench next to Peter. "As much as it pains me to say it - Rogers is right. With the kind of technology he has access to, he could power the Tesseract from anywhere. So, what do we know? How do we narrow it down?"

"He needs the scepter. He could have left here without it, but he made the effort to get it back," Captain America begins, looking at Tony with the start of something that might be respect.

Maybe.

(Adults are weird.)

"He probably needs it to control his army," Black Widow comments, sauntering into the room and taking in the scene with naught but a raised brow. "Or to control the men he still has. There's been no sign of Selvig since he was taken. All the lives Loki threw away attacking the Helicarrier and Selvig's the one he chose to protect. _He_ 's the king on our board, not Loki."

"But _why_ did he attack the Helicarrier?" Peter asks. He fails not to squirm under their regard, but continues anyway, "If he could escape at anytime, without any help at all, why send his minions? It's big and dramatic and doesn't gain him anything at all, except making a lot of people very angry."

Astoundingly, Doctor Banner nods as if he's made a very good point. "Everything Loki's done has been about us. He wanted to fight us, he wanted to be brought to the Helicarrier. Why? Coming here gets him nothing, except maybe the chance to taunt his brother - but he could literally do that anywhere. So why?"

"He wants to beat us and be seen beating us." Uncle Tony's voice is not exactly uneven, but it's definitely the tone of a man arriving at an answer he'd give almost anything to change.

"And which of us has his name plastered on a monument in the sky?"

"In three different cities, and under construction in four more."

"Really?" Captain America asks in clear disbelief, turning back to Black Widow for confirmation.

She only shrugs, so it's Uncle Tony who answers with but a hint of his trademark bravado. "I'm a very successful man. But, no. Construction's not yet begun in Hong Kong and they're still digging the foundations in Toronto. Only the New York, London, and Tokyo towers are finished, though the one in Sydney is close enough it might make no difference."

"New York," a voice rasps and it takes all that Peter has not to jump straight to the ceiling. He hadn't realized Evil Archer Guy, slumped in a heap near the doors, was awake. (Or alive. Or no longer evil.) "He left Selvig in New York."

Uncle Tony's, "Fuck," pretty much sums up the situation, but he continues anyway. "Fuck, fuck, fuck." Nanotech starts to bleed from their housings, the layers of his armor crashing over him in waves. "JARVIS,prep the Iron Legion. Prioritize civilian evacuation within ten blocks of the New York Tower. Have FRIDAY get on the phone with the mayor, the chief of police, the governor - all the usual suspects - and update Rhodey on the situation. And make sure the FAA grounds all flights in the metro area. We do _not_ need to hand invaders that kind of target. Lock down Tokyo and London just to be safe - and get in contact with Sarge. Tell him to grab Maman and the Odd Couple and go to ground. If we get to Selvig before Loki does, he might go after Foster to finish the job.

“Pete-"

“Uncle Tony-!" There is no way he's keeping him out of the fight. There are eight-and-a-half million people in New York. If Loki brings his army, it will be a slaughter.

“Ah! I don’t want want to hear it. No unnecessary risks, understand? Stick with Stephen or Bruce for as long as you can. But listen to the others. They'll know where you’re needed better than you.”

“Yes, Uncle Tony!”

He turns to the others. “I can get to New York the fastest on my own. I’ll try to intercept before Loki can open up the portal, but if I can’t..."

He doesn't finish his sentence. He doesn't need to. He just lets his faceplate snap shut and rockets through the broken window, heading west as fast as the suit can take him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) According to Wikipedia, "Subjects [of tasing] with elevated heart rates associated with drug use and extreme exertion are especially likely to suffer from cardiac arrest and, if not treated immediately, sudden death." I figure a radioactive spider bite is similar effects to drug use and extreme exertion on the body, thus everyone's concern.  
> 2) Yes, while we were all busy worrying about Peter, Fury bled out on the floor... This fic, coincidently, will not be _Agents of SHIELD_ compliant.  
> 3) I feel there is much to be said about the fact that Fury chose Rogers - who, whichever timeline you chose, _is_ the youngest and least experienced of all of the Avengers - to lead. Granted, he fought WWII, but being a strike force in a war that was fought 70 years ago is a lot different than superheroing in modern times. At best, he must have felt Rogers would rise to the occasion... At worst, you get things like _an incompetent insider is better than a competent outsider_.  
> 4) More about the circumstances around Howard's death will come out in Section C (I have sections how. Chapters 1-5 were Section 1, the interlude Section A; this is Section 2.... so two interludes from now). But it was decidedly Winter Solider-free this time 'round.  
> 5) Yes, multiple Stark Towers. For their locations, I started with the major international financial centers - New York, London, and Tokyo - then started picking and choosing major regional ones to get broader geographic distribution. Since the first Tower was still opened in 2012 in NYC, I figure at absolute most SI would finish one a year. But the ultimate goal would be something like: NYC, Tokyo, London, Sydney, Zürich, Toronto, Hong Kong, Dubai, Johannesburg, São Paulo, Seoul, and LA for best financial and geographic spread. _The sun never sets on the Stark Empire._


	11. 2 May, 2015 (VII)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Battle of New York. Or, if you do not resist the apparently inevitable, you will never know how inevitable the inevitable was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternately: the Avengers hit things, part one. 
> 
> So, work has been crazy lately, and it turns out the smoke I've been smelling the last few weeks was my electrical wiring and not my neighbors, so apologies on the slow update. (I'm fine, but all of the wiring in my AC has somehow managed to melt when it wasn't turned on. Go figure.) That, and I cycled through a couple of POV before I settled on this one. (Writing is hard.)
> 
> (No, really, I've no idea how this one happened, and I'm not sure I like it, but...)

Thor finds Lord Stark’s manse in the center of the city, as Lord Strange promised. It is not as grand as the All-Father’s palace, nor as extensive as the estate of his lady aunt, Freya Vanadís, but it befits a prince of Midgard, rising high above the skyline in pride of place amongst many less handsome buildings.

It is also well guarded. He feels the sorcerer's magic wash over him as he lands, recognizing him as friend and shield-brother to those who dwell within, but no less vigilant for it-

-particularly as Friend Selvig has somehow made it past all defenses. He stares at his activated creation with stupefied awe, unheeding the lines of vermillion fire that rise from the rooftop and tangle themselves about his ankles. This close to the Tesseract, the Midgardian magic cannot contain him, and so Selvig gambols about the rooftop without constraint or care for the edge.

"Selvig! End this madness!"

"She can't stop now," he shouts back, eyes ablaze with otherworldly light. "She wants to show us something!"

"Do not listen to her whispers, Friend. The Tesseract is a vile, wretched thing born of ash and battle-sweat, and can show naught but the same. Heeding its words now will bring doom to your world. If you value it at all - if anything of the man I would call brother remains - I beg of you, end this now.”

Selvig gives him the guileless, witless smile of those who have partaken too much ale. “A new and glorious universe awaits us. When the portal opens and the armies of my master claim their prize, the realms will finally know peace.”

“Loki’s rule will bring you only chaos,” Thor protests, receiving only-

“One must know chaos to birth a dancing star.”

-in reply.

Clearly, Selvig is beyond all reason.

The All-Mother had taught her children never to interrupt a magical working. A spell need not be powerful to have catastrophic effects if allowed to rebound upon the caster.

In his youth, a handmaiden's efforts to enhance her beauty had robbed her of it instead, twisting her features until it resembled naught but a candle left too long to burn.

A scant handful of years later, Thor and his friends had done battle against a mage of Alfheim. Fandral had struck a mighty blow against the fiend mid-casting, causing the magics to let loose too soon. Only Loki's quick shielding of themselves and the Warriors Three had kept them from being burned to cinders along with the surrounding countryside.

(Loki had barely been old enough to leave the crèche then and slept for weeks after. The All-Mother had been certain he would die. When he did not, the feasting lasted three days and three nights. It had been the first and only time his brother's gifts had been celebrated in such a way. Though Thor had not the All-Father's wisdom, he could not but wonder if that had been the true start of the business this day. They had taken Loki's gifts, like the man, for granted and now Midgard is paying the price.)

Although Selvig had crafted his casting in the Midgardian manner, with metal and caged lightning, it is still a powerful magical working - but allowing the spell to complete would be more disastrous than any interruption. Even if the backlash levels the city, the realm would be spared the doom the Tesseract will certainly bring.

"I am sorry for this, my friend, but you shall have your freedom in death. We will share meat and mead again in Valhalla."

Thor readies Mjölnir. He aims for the place directly above the cube and strikes with all his might-

-only to be blocked by a great shielding of the sort Loki had once used to protect him, in the days they still fought side by side. The strength of his blow so turned rattles his teeth and forces him over the edge of manse.

Undeterred, he uses Mjölnir to hold himself aloft as he calls upon his gift as he never has before. He is no mage, but magic is in his blood; even before he carried Mjölnir, the storm always answered his call.

The sky darkens.

Lightning strikes once, twice, three times in quick succession, causing the shielding to reverberate with the peal of a great gong, audible even over the crash of thunder which follows. But it does not falter, nor show any sign of weakening.

It _does_ send Selvig to his knees, which is enough for the protections Lord Strange laid down to take hold, trapping the man beneath a magical netting.

The device must still be stopped.

He must find Loki.

He will not have left his thrall unattended. Having lost the others in his attack upon the flying vessel, his plans for rule hinge upon the last. He must be inside.

As the storm clears, Thor casts about for an entrance to the manse. Unless Loki carried his servant directly to the rooftop, there must be a-

-there. Through the window on the floor below. His brother has cornered Lord Stark without his armor. Loki carries the scepter as easily as he ever did a stave, but is is still strange to see the man he learned to fight beside without the knives he used for so long. Perhaps it is this strangeness which delays him, confounding his mind with conflicting memories until Loki brings the weapon to bear - not to strike, but to ensnare Lord Stark as he has Selvig.

He can no longer wait to find a door.

Calling upon Mjölnir once more, Thor raises his hammer and hurls himself through the glass below.The blow knocks Loki to the floor, but not before the scepter has connected with the star the Midgardian prince carries within his chest.

Thor turns immediately, expecting to find battle on a second front. Instead, he finds Lord Stark leaning to grasp the scepter as gauntlet, rerebrace, and pauldron form about his sword arm. Stark studies the glowing gem it bears for only as long as it takes to straighten. Then, in the same movement, raises the scepter and bashes the headpiece into the ground.

The gem shatters. Shards of crystal - sapphire, citrine, and abyssal black - join the window glass upon the floor.

Loki, in the midst of climbing to his feet, collapses like a martinet with its stings cut. The colors of his face change, paling to the wanness of one long kept from heaven's candle where it does not mottle yellow-purple or stain lurid, brutish red. Though his armor remains unchanged, it hangs loosely now - far too loosely - and what bones he can see are far too pronounced.

Thor knows these injuries. He had never thought to see them upon one whom he held so dear.

"I will find the one who did this," he roars. "I will see his entrails torn from his body and a gallows built of his bones! I will hang what remains from a gibbet of his own flesh until he learns enough of wisdom to know the folly of daring to do harm to the brother of Thor! Only then shall I cut him free, so that my brother and I together can tutor him in the true meaning of torment!"

Dimly, through his blind, frothing rage, he is aware of Lord Stark nodding absently as he studies what remains of the scepter. "You tell 'em, Big Guy." His face twists into a moue of displeasure as he tosses the twisted metal away from what remains of the jewel. "Any chance your brother can shut things down?"

"Lord Stark, I am not certain my brother can lift his arms, let alone that spell. The power surrounding the Cube is impenetrable and he is..." There's no way to finish that sentence without giving voice to his fears his brother will cease to breathe if he looks away, so Thor says nothing at all.

"Got it," Stark says with genuine sympathy. "We'll get Gandalf and the rest of the Istari on it. It'll be..." His face pales dramatically as a great blast sounds, loud and clear enough to be heard across all the realms, like the horn that will blow only once, at the end of all things. "Right. Army."

As Lord Stark blasts into the sky, Thor spares one last glance at his brother, who shows no signs of waking, before doing the same.

He does not see one of Stark's metal creations appear from deeper in the manse and pick out the largest of the crystal's shards with its single, claw-like arm before rolling back from whence it came.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) If MCU can make a mess of Norse Mythology, so can I. Ergo, Freya is now Frigga's sister - and Frey their brother by association. I'll probably end up messing around with this some more later. But for now... so many references. (No, really, read Neil Gaimen's _Norse Mythology_ , it is fascinating and hilarious.)  
> 2) "Vanadís" roughly translates to "goddess fo the Vanir."  
> 3) Yes, that is a Nietzsche reference.  
> 4) If Loki fell from Asgard in '08 and the invasion happens here in '15, he was in Thanos' hands for that much longer. 3 extra years of Thanos does very little for ones state of mind or one's ability to cling to masks. In short, in the original timeline Loki led an invasion practically designed to fail to escape Thanos. Here, there's more madness at play.  
> 5) "Istari" is Quenya for "Wizard" in LoTR.  
> 6) Alas, the English language has no word for, "the great, wounded cry of a war elephant as played slowly through a metal tube with the bass turned up high enough to shake the walls," which is what I think of when I think of holes being torn in reality, so I went with a Gjallerhorn reference instead.


	12. 2 May, 2015 (VIII)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Battle of New York. Or, the more things change, the more things stay the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternately: the Avengers hit things, part two.
> 
> I fundamentally believe most people are, at heart, good people. I think that if an invasion of the sort we see in A1 were to happen, there would be many heroes, but that the forces on hand would not be able to deal with an alien invasion. I think history has told us much about what happens when a population goes up against a group with superior firepower, and that the invasion we see in A1 was likely constrained by the size of the portal and, to some degree, Loki himself. 
> 
> This is an attempt to write as realistic an invasion as possible, given the circumstances. Consider this your tissue warning.

During the original invasion, Stephen had been a seventh year neurosurgical resident at NYU Langone. That morning, he had stepped into the OR hoping to steal a fairly interesting microvascular decompression from his least favorite surgical fellow and when he'd walked out - been pulled out, really, by a frantic attending looking for anyone who could be trusted with a scalpel - the world had gone mad.

Aliens in New York.

A _nuclear strike_ on New York.

A hole in the sky that would not close and, when it finally did, Tony Stark, who he'd only known by reputation, plummeting to Earth like a falling star.

(Later, someone on one of the far-right news channels would liken it to that famous illustration by Gustave Doré and claim the only way the invasion could have ended better was if the Hulk had let Stark die, as it would be the only chance at redemption a man both famous and infamous for his irreverent iconoclasm would ever have. Stephen has rarely wished to harm to anyone, but that memory stretches the bounds of his oath, especially in light of all he now knows.)

He had not seen that invasion. He'd spent it and the next thirteen days in and out of operating rooms, kept awake and aware entirely by coffee and sheer, bloodyminded spite. When the Chief of Surgery had finally forced him from the hospital, the worst of the wreckage had been cleared away. The only Chitauri he'd ever seen were on newsreels after the fact.

Stephen has been in battles since then. He's seen others, in the recordings Tony makes every time he gets in the suit and the half-forgotten memories of those fourteen million futures that occasionally see fit to haunt his dreams.

Nothing prepares him for New York.

 

 

Peter was twelve years old before he realized his grandfather had worked on the Manhattan Project. He had never been unaware of Howard's part in the Second World War, but all the histories centered on his actions in the European theater. The fact his one legacy in the Pacific involved the deaths of two hundred thousand people - there are days when Peter still cannot believe any human being would agree to be part of that.

He'd asked Uncle Tony if Howard had ever expressed regret for what he'd done.

" _I don't think he saw them as people,_ " Uncle Tony had said after a long silence. " _I don't want you to- Your grandfather did a lot of good things. It's entirely possible that his inventions saved more lives than they ever destroyed._

" _But_ -" He'd licked his lips and set aside his soldering iron, which had begun to smoke from unused tin, " _You don't make a supersoldier without a clear view of what you imagine your master race to be. Howard didn't care about skin color or religion - his parents were Russian Jewish immigrants and even he wasn't_ that _hypocritical - but he had very clear ideas on what made a society worthwhile. Very Western, very American ideas. And the Japanese, for all their imperialism, didn't make the cut._ "

Then Uncle Tony had pulled out a tablet and started telling him about Operation Downfall, the Allied plan to invade Japan. He spoke about the geography of Japan and how that allowed the Japanese to accurately predict planned Allied beachheads and prepare accordingly. He spoke of the Battle of Okinawa, fought over eighty-two days to provide an anchorage and staging area for the invasion of the home islands, and the one hundred fifty thousand civilians who died of sickness or starvation or by their own hand. Then he'd spoken of casualty estimates for a battle no one could see lasting less than two years, ranging from the horrific to the unimaginable on both sides, and laid them against the lives already lost to the war.

And, at the end of it, he asked Peter what he would do if he were Truman, given the choice between a weapon that should never be used and an invasion whose toll would almost certainly have exceeded the combined populations of Chicago and Los Angeles _today_.

Peter still doesn't know. But seeing the damage the Chitauri are doing to New York, he can see why the Allies might have made the choice they did.

There are eight-and-a-half million people in New York City. Every single one of them will die if the invasion succeeds, followed quickly by every other living being on the planet. It does not matter if extermination is not the Chitauri's goal: Humanity will not go down without a fight, and this is a fight they cannot hope to win.

The Air Force is holding a perimeter around the island thanks to Uncle Rhodey, but are limited to picking off strays that wander too close to the East River or Hudson. Fighter jets, their commander insists, are not designed maneuver above city streets where the fighting is and Uncle Rhodey, still inbound from the west coast, agrees.

The National Guard faces similar problems. Their infantry can hold a perimeter stretching from Gramercy Park to the Upper East Side, but the artillery they have access to risks doing more damage than it might prevent. And the tanks that might help? Too heavy for the bridges leading into the city or caught in the traffic of those fleeing while they still can.

The sea lanes are crowded as every ship capable in the Port of New York makes for sea, some pausing long enough to take on every evacuee they can carry. The Navy cannot get through.

Their only hope is in closing the portal.

The Avengers' plane crashes near Grand Central Station, after a flight made long by Uncle Stephen trying to explain _no, I can't just take us straight to the Tower, my sorcerers have been reporting distortions in the fabric of reality as far out as Baltimore since the Tesseract activated and they're only spreading, I can show you the group text if you don't believe me but I'm afraid it won't make much sense if you don't speak Cantonese, Nepali, or chat-speak;_ I _can barely make sense of some of the hieroglyphs Wong calls perfectly intelligible speech and I've known the man since before texting was a thing._

Peter loses track of what's happening after that. He's vaguely aware of Captain America leading the fight on the ground as Uncle Tony - Iron Man - does what the Air Force cannot above the streets of Manhattan. There is lightning and terror and the smell of smoke from every direction, and he doesn't know if Aunt May or Aunt Pepper or any of his friends are safe, but it's his job to help Uncle Stephen get to the top of the Tower, so that's what he tries to focus on because that's the only way he can keep _them_ safe as well.

They have to go up the outside, as neither of them want to risk lifting the lockdown. The Tower's automated defenses may not be the only thing keeping the Chitauri from gaining access to the arc reactors, but if one of those goes, so does most of Midtown. The armored space whales keep away, perhaps reluctant to damage the platform hosting the rift that will take them back to their own space, but the flying chariots have no such compunctions.

(Peter would prefer to forget this part: He never wanted to kill _anyone_ , not even an evil space alien, but it was either it or him and _he had no choice_ \- not then or the dozens of times that followed - _if he let it go it would only have killed someone who couldn't protect themselves_.)

(He's saving people.)

(He can hear the screams fifty stories up.)

( _Please_ , by the entire pantheon of all the gods, _let them close the portal._ )

Loki is there waiting for them when they reach the topmost balcony of Tower, casually conjuring daggers and embedding them in the skulls of passing Chitauri. His smile is easy. His breathing is not. "Stonekeeper, nice of you to join us."

"Well, you went to so much trouble to get my attention. It would have been impolite not to show," Uncle Stephen responds in kind, his relaxed tone betrayed by the orange bucklers that crackle into being around his rising fists. "I had not realized you were co-hosting this party."

"Save your magics, Sorcerer. I spoke only of Professor Selvig, who remains entrapped by the protections you have placed on your home. The Son of A'Lars will not leave Sanctuary until the one they call The Accuser returns with the Orb that is kin to the Cube."

Apparently this means something to Uncle Stephen, who turns his back on Loki but does not let his magic fall. "I assume that, since you have not closed the portal, you can not."

Loki's face twists in displeasure. "I believe this one instance where the axiom _like defeats like_ holds true, but currently have neither the strength or ability to do more than postulate." He conjures another dagger and tosses it sharply over one shoulder, where it strikes a passing charioteer in the eye.

"I was afraid you were going to say that."

And that's when Uncle Tony's voice breaks over the comms.

 

 

Tony's goading a leviathan towards Roosevelt Island for the F-15s to enfilade when the call comes, crackling over the USAF channel, " _Colonel, I’ve got a bird inbound from the north that will not, I repeat, will not, wave off. Profile matches an F-35._ "

" _Where the fuck did that come from? They aren't supposed to be ready until-_ "

" _Holy shit!_ " interrupts the first, " _I've got a radiological alarm! The dial's gone straight into the red! Can anybody confirm?_ "

" _Whiplash Ten here. I’m seeing the same._ "

" _Whiplash Twelve also._ "

" _They’re going to nuke Manhattan! They’re really going to do it!_ "

This, it appears, is squadron commander's limit. " _Not on my watch they’re not. Prepare to-_ "

" _Do_ not _engage_!" Rhodey shouts over the open line, wind snapping over the comms as he rushes east from Edwards. Even at War Machine's top speed, he's still twenty minutes out. " _I repeat, do_ not _engage! You shoot that thing down and we might still loose half of the island. Iron Man-"_

"I heard," Tony answers, surprised at how calm his voice is. He remembers being so afraid last time, all too aware of what a missile strike could do to Midtown even before he'd realized the payload was thermonuclear. He's seen so much worse since, which leaves him almost numb with the knowledge that this is only the first battle of a war he was never meant to escape. "How long?"

" _Three minutes, max. Tony, that thing goes off-_ "

Tony doesn’t need to know their numbers. If it’s the same bomb as before, falsely listed as destroyed in the post-Cold War ramp down, the fireball alone will stretch from Rockefeller Center to Bryant Park. The twenty-six square miles surrounding the Tower would be as good as flattened, including both of the Level 1 Trauma Centers south of Fifty-Ninth. Depending on wind conditions, the mushroom cloud would be almost ten miles high.

One point five million people would die.

"I know. JARVIS, funnel everything we've got left into the thrusters. I can divert it through the portal."

Rhodey's voice catches over the line, still open so that all the pilots blockading the island can hear his fear. " _That’s a one way trip, Tones._ "

"Yes, well... _you must go on breathing and I’ll be safe in hell_." Tony switches over to The Avengers' private channel before Rhodey can beg him not to. "Steph, how’s it looking with the Tesseract?"

" _Give me two minutes and I’ll be through._ "

"I’m going to need three-"

" _Stark, these things are still coming,_ " Rogers cuts in, like Tony's somehow unaware of the nightmare around them - or like exhaustion makes him say the painfully obvious; Tony's never been sure. Now he never will be.

"And I’ve got a nuke that will take out half the city. I’m going to put it through the portal and you need to close it behind me."

Whatever protests the others have is drowned out by Peter's, " _No!_ "

“Pete! Pete, listen to me: this bomb is twenty times more powerful than what they dropped on Hiroshima. The radiation alone could devastate the eastern seaboard." Tony tries to think of all the things he wishes his father had told him before he died - all the instructions he wishes he'd had - but he can see the missile now and can't bear to fill his last memories with talk of the company. "You're going to have a great life, Peter. You're going to fall in love and make mistakes and do so much good- You're going to be the best of us. I'm so proud of you, and I'm sorry I won't get to see it." Then, "JARVIS, shut down Peter's comms. He doesn’t need to hear this."

Then the bomb is in hand-

-and he’s left the turn so close he scrapes the paint-

-and the air is being sucked out of his suit, bleeding into hard vacuum through a dent in the armor he doesn't have enough power to close-

-and the Chitauri mothership is going up in flames-

-and as his comms flicker out, he hears Stephen shouting for Peter to close the portal-

-and he starts to fall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) The only things I know about medical residency come from half-forgotten memories of _Grey's Anatomy_ I borrowed from my roommate over a decade ago. Nevertheless, google tells me you typically become a neurosurgeon after getting your undergrad, doing 4 years in med school, and completing a 6-8 year residency. A 1-2 year fellowship afterwards is optional.  
> Since I somehow got it into my head when imagining this fic that Stephen was (originally) 7 years younger than Tony, that puts his birthday in '81. Assuming he starts undergrad at 17 and graduates in 3 years, that still makes him a 7th year resident in 2012, when the original invasion occurred. That gives him 2-3 years before his accident _has_ to happen, which really gives new perspective on why he might be so keen to get his hands back after. RL certainly makes comic book accomplishments questionable, doesn't it?  
> 2) "Satan Descends Upon Earth" is an illustration by Gustave Doré for _Paradise Lost_.  
> 3) There's no definitive background on Howard Stark's parents in the MCU other then that they were poor, but the idea of them being Russians who fled the country after the February Revolution tickled my fancy. Particularly with the spin this puts on his later dealings with Vanko and the Red Room... Plus, he always struck me as vaguely McCarthyist, so... *shrugs*  
> 4) If you've never watched Neil Halloran's "The Fallen of World War II", do so now. But with a box of tissues.  
> 5) One of the police officers in A1 says that it will take an hour for the National Guard to get through, and we see what certainly appears to be guardsmen later in the film. Ergo, the fighting probably lasts longer than the movie itself.  
> 6) The Kree-Nova War ends in 2014, after which Ronan the Accuser agrees to help Thanos get the Orb. This remains the same in both timelines.  
> 7) The aircraft used to launch the Nuke is _probably_ a Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II... which came out in 2006 but wasn't deployed by the US military until mid-2015, but I guess spies get things faster.  
> 8) If you want to know real horror, go to NUKEMAP and show the estimates for a W-78 striking Midtown, which is what I've gone with here. If that doesn't stop your heart, try one of the megaton bombs. I'm really hoping the WSC council was hoping the fireball would take out Tesseract, else it is far more than just a stupid ass decision.  
> 9) _You must go on breathing, and I’ll be safe in hell_ is a paraphrase of Dorothy Parker's "Braggart", which just seemed to fit.


	13. Interlude: October 1988 (I)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beginnings. Or, once upon a time, two men traveled thirty years into the past in a desperate attempt to save the universe. The relationship that follows is a surprise to both of them. This is how it begins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternately: time travel is problematic for a variety of reasons, especially when you can't use your own identity. 
> 
> So... This chapter has gone through about 20 iterations before I settled on this one. It's shorter than I would like and doesn't cover all I wished to for it to, but hopefully you enjoy. Thanks again to everyone who has taken the time to read, and comment, and kudos this story so far.

By mid-October, they have fallen into a pattern: every Tuesday and Friday afternoon, Stephen packs up his research and heads for the MIT campus for takeout and plotting universal salvation - a phrase which Stephen suspects was chosen simply for the way it made his eye twitch when Tony first suggested it.

This is not the problem. There is plenty to discuss. The question of how best to safeguard the two Infinity Stones currently on Earth may take them years to solve.

Obtaining them is another matter entirely. Without his sling ring, the Time Stone must wait until Stephen has a valid passport and, possibly, for the resolution of the People's Movement that Tony remembers as having taken place in Nepal during this time. (" _I know it wasn't as bad as the Maoist Conflict because nobody came to us looking for weapons, but most of the attention then was on the Afghan Civil War, or the Intifada, or the mess in Liberia. I could just be forgetting, or it was all so under the table that there weren't any records when I finally got my hands on things in '95_ ," Tony had shrugged.)

As for the Space Stone, they know the Red Skull had taken it out of Norway during the German Occupation. (" _I'm not sure why it was there - maybe the Asgardians dropped it while they were still dropping in on us, but who the fuck doesn't come back for an Infinity Stone?_ ") It was lost with Rogers in early 1945, fished out of the North Atlantic by Tony's father ten years later, and has been in SHIELD's hands ever since. (" _Though where is anyone's guess. They're all fancy helicarriers and self-aggrandizement on the Potomac in our day, but now it's still Brooklyn basements and unlisted talent agencies. The PATRIOT Act fattened a lot of budgets._ ")

This is far from ideal but, again, it's not the problem.

This is: Stephen is starting to look for excuses to visit more.

It’s stupid - beyond ridiculous really. He barely knew Tony before this mess. He barely knows him now. And yet-

Tony believes they can stop Thanos. They know next to nothing about their enemy beyond his stated goals and yet Tony honestly, genuinely, _emphatically_ believes they can keep the Mad Titan from achieving his mad plan. (" _I'm not saying it will be easy, but if we can keep him from getting his hands on these two, that's two Stones he doesn't have. From there, it's just the universe's biggest game of keep away._ ")

It's intoxicating, particularly as Stephen's beginning to feel the weight of fourteen million futures where even victory over Thanos had been its own failure. He can almost ignore it during the day, filling his hours with research and readings, but come night...

Stephen hasn't slept much since arriving in 1988.

Not, of course, that anybody he's been forced to interact with since his arrival expects him to have time for something as mundane as sleep. The fake identity Tony had made for him is both close enough to the truth that Stephen scarcely needs to worry about losing track of the lie (" _Congratulations, you're now an orphan. Condolences, you have to keep your name. No, wait, reverse that. Actually, on second thought, don't."_ ) and all but unassailable (" _No, your actual uncle really did marry your new mom shortly before he died, the DoD has the records right here, but since it was an American soldier and an Australian reporter getting married in a Vietnamese ceremony during the war and she never claimed death benefits, the paperwork regarding your current existence is so wrapped up in international red tape that everyone is going to think it's everyone else's fault, and it all works out for us. What, you think this is my first time making a false identity?_ "). With the help of some forged paperwork and slight bribery, Stephen is now enrolled at Harvard and looking to graduate in spring of '91 with degrees in Neuroscience, Biomedical Engineering, and South Asian Studies. To someone unaware that he was once both a practicing neurosurgeon and Master of the Mystic Arts, it would be more surprising to see him sleeping than to discover he didn't.

But issues of sleep aside, he shouldn't want to spend as much time around Tony as he does.

The man is insufferable - brilliantly charming and brutally intelligent, but insufferable. He's nearly set himself on fire three times in the two months Stephen's known him, twice because he keeps forgetting _clothing is flammable_ when putting down his soldering iron. His arrogance is going to get him killed one day if his temper doesn't do it first-

-and that's only assuming someone doesn't take advantage of his generosity and leave him for dead on the side of the road somewhere after taking him for everything he has before he has the chance to mortally offend anybody. The man who once taunted terrorists live on national television is there in the boy he is again-

-as is the man who could have easily lied and said it was impossible to turn the Maw's ship around, but asked for Stephen's consent anyway. The same man who is making it possible for him to become a _surgeon_ again when he doesn't owe Stephen anything, and-

Oh.

 _That_ 's it.

Time travel may have given Stephen his hands back, but _Tony_ 's making it possible for him to practice medicine again, even if it means going through college and med school and residency from the beginning - which makes this _gratitude_ , which Stephen's always had problems with. Not the emotion itself, but what to do with it.

With Christine, he'd been so grateful for her help during the business with Kaecilius that he reinitiated a relationship he'd thought she wanted that only ended up causing them both further pain. That had worked about as well as could be expected; the friendship they salvaged after was entirely attributable to Christine's good nature - and, perhaps, her desire to save him from the Ancient One's _cult_.

Now he's indebted to Tony. (" _Just take the money. It's not like it'll hurt me any. If it really bothers you, you can pay me back by helping me come up with a decent myoelectric prosthesis just as soon as better microprocessors come on the market."_ ) Everything they're doing now is made possible by Tony's fame and wealth and connections and intelligence; most of their future plans rely on knowledge of events that only he has. Stephen got them to the past, but Tony's the one who can make use of it. (" _I'm not saying we need to_ break _Moore's Law, just_ bend _it a little."_ ) He owes Tony everything, potentially even doing what he cannot and protecting reality-

-and Tony is turning into the dictionary definition of reclusive genius before his eyes. (" _Stephen! Thank goodness you're here! I'm in desperate need of conversation that doesn't leave me wanting to carve my eyes out with a lobster fork. I don't remember MIT being this full of idiots the last time around."_ ) No wonder Stephen feels he needs to spend more time around him.

"I am such an idiot," Stephen groans, letting himself fall backwards across the couch.

"You're triple majoring," his roommate Simon says in droll disagreement from his own desk. "That's psychosis, not idiocy."

"Your support is, as always, appreciated."

"It's what I'm here for."

Stephen rolls his eyes and starts packing his things. "I'm heading out. Don't know when I'll be back."

"Try not to pick up any more majors while you're out."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) The 1990 People's Movement "was a multiparty movement in Nepal that brought an end to absolute monarchy and the beginning of constitutional democracy" and largely contained to that year. Tony's misremembering how long it was and doesn't want to take chances on being wrong about how violent it might have been. The Maoist Conflict, or Nepali Civil War, was from 1996-2006. The Afghan Civil War in question was 1989–1992. The First Palestinian Intifada was 1987-1991. The First Liberian Civil War was 1989-1997.  
> 2) I will admit, I did try researching the majors Harvard and MIT offered in 1988... and eventually decided I would just go with what they have today and make adjustments accordingly. I'm not sure when CS split from EE, but I think it was before Python, so...  
> 


	14. Interlude: October 1988 (II)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Conversations. Or, Stephen and Tony talk and maybe actually figure some things out along the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternately: _"You're fourteen years old." "Please don't remind me."_
> 
> RL is time consuming and takes away from important things like writing, but here's another chapter. It got away from me a little bit, but...

Tony's hair is a rumpled mess when he - finally - opens the door. "Strange?" he asks, squinting against the light of the hall. "Is something wrong?"

"No, nothing's wrong. Why?"

"It's Sunday."

"So?"

"So," Tony says in clear bafflement, "you never come on Sunday."

Stephen holds up the bag he's been carrying, fighting back a wave of inexplicable guilt. Despite appearances, Tony is an adult and perfectly capable of taking care of himself; the fact that he choses not to do so is infuriating, but - as he is neither his father, brother, nor boyfriend - utterly beyond Stephen's control. "I brought curry from that place off Green."

"Why didn't you say so? Come on in."

"If you were sleeping-"

"I don't sleep," Tony insists, making a beeline for his bed and collapsing face first onto it. "Sleep is for people who don't need to reinvent parallel computing from from scratch," he continues when he's shifted enough not to risk suffocation, though part of his face is still obscured by the hood of his overlarge sweatshirt. "I'm thankful for the second chance, I really am, but why, why, _why_ did your Time Stone insist on dropping us in the Dark Ages?"

Because Stephen's grown as a person since his accident, he gallantly doesn't point out the music playing in the background - on an actual turntable, at that - is barely younger than Tony himself. Instead he says, "I seem to recall several interviews where you stated how much you love the Eighties."

"Been reading up on me, Doc?"

"Hardly," Stephen informs him dryly. "One of the downsides of having an eidetic memory is being able to remember every tabloid headline from every checkout you've ever been in."

"That sucks."

"It has its moments."

"Of sucking or not sucking?"

"Both," Stephen admits, unpacking the curry onto the arm of the couch - possibly the only flat space in Tony's half of the dorm that isn't covered in books, electronics, or rolls of solder. "I used to use it to irritate the surgical staff. Most surgeons play music while they're operating," he explains. "One of the techs realized it didn't matter what they were playing, I knew the track details every time, so he took it upon himself to find the most obscure music possible to try to stump me. It never worked. I'm not sure who the floor nurses hated more for it - me or him."

"Well go on then, impress me."

"With something as easy as this? 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond' - the first half, not the second - from Pink Floyd's ninth studio album, _Wish You Were Here_ , released September 12, 1975 by Harvest Records. It never charted on its own, but the album as a whole spent one hundred five weeks on the charts, though only seven in the top ten - unlike their previous, which spent forty-three weeks in the top ten. By our time, it would be certified sextuple platinum and be ranked two hundred eleven on _Rolling Stone_ 's '500 Greatest Albums of All Time'. _The Dark Side of The Moon_ was Pink Floyd's highest ranking album on that same list, coming in at number forty-three."

Tony whistles as he burrows deeper into his blanket cocoon. "Okay, that _is_ impressive. Though I don't care what other people say: _Wish You Were Here_ is the better album."

"Not a fan of alarm clocks, are you?"

"How did you know?"

"Call it a lucky guess. Are you going to stay in your blanket nest or are you going to come out and eat any time soon?"

"I'm not hungry."

"You're not hungry," Stephen repeats flatly, eyeing the single tuft of hair he can see with concern.

"That's what I said."

"You're fourteen years old."

"Please don't remind me."

"There are only two reasons why a fourteen-year-old boy might have no appetite, but since I refuse to believe any self-respecting bartender would be taken in by your baby face-"

"Hey!"

"-I'm forced to conclude that you did not, in fact, get your flu shot."

"I did! Take it from the guy who used to get pneumonia or bronchitis twice a year, I _don't_ lie about- What are you doing? Are you really-? You are."

Using the back of one's hand is hardly the most accurate gauge of temperature, but it's a starting place - or is after a quick fabric straightening spell Stephen picked up while studying the Cloak. "You don't have a fever, though you are a touch on the clammy side-"

"I'm not sick!"

"If you have a depressed immune system-"

"I don't, not anymore-"

"It's not something you just grow out of-"

"It is when you no longer have a giant gaping hole in your chest compromising your immune system!"

"Ah."

"Yes, _ah_ ," Tony says, yanking a frankly alarming number of blankets back over himself. "I've got to say, one of the few things I do love about being fourteen again: the full lung capacity. Also, thanks for the concern and all, but your bedside manner could use some serious work, Doc."

"So I've been told."

"It's not just me you've molested then?"

Stephen winces. " _Please_ ," he is not ashamed of begging, "do _not_ word it that way. I know how old you really are, but it's unsettling when you look like you just escaped from the latest Disney animated movie."

"I'll have you know that I was voted the Sexiest Man Alive three times, Merlin. _Three_."

" _After_ you grew facial hair. And that," he hurries on, desperate to change the subject, "doesn't change the fact that, even without a fever, you're clearly not feeling well. More than simple post-midterm exhaustion."

"I had a panic attack earlier," Tony admits after a long silence, plucking at the threads of the topmost blanket - a handmade quilt nearly as old as the record still playing faintly in the background. "If I'd known you'd make such a big deal of it, I'd never have opened the door."

"I suppose asking what triggered it is too much to hope for?"

"I’ll tell you about it later, if you still want. But right now? Just... just keep talking. I'm tired and cold and need out of my head for a while."

"What would you like me to talk about?" Stephen asks, perching awkwardly on the bed.

"I dunno. Tell me about Valinor. Or the cloak you had in the future. The handsy outerwear standard wizard issue, or do you have to go on an epic quest to get it back?"

"It's not _handsy_ -"

"It slapped my ass!"

"You're severely underestimating how creepy that sounds."

"You’re the one who lives - lived - in a haunted house!"

"It’s not a haunted house! It's part of a network of garrisons built on locations of great mystical energy intended to guard Earth from extra-dimensional threats."

"Doesn’t stop it from being a haunted house."

"The other sanctums are more modern - or, at least, they were in our time. The master who held New York before me," not counting Master Drumm, who had been executed by Kaecilius not three months after taking up the mantle, "was the exception, not the rule. Wong says - said - that Master Zaal would have had the place lit using only rushlight and whale oil if it hadn’t meant ripping out the gas lines already in place.”

"Real Luddite, huh?"

"Apprentices loathed him. His favorite saying was _attachment to the material is detachment from the spiritual_ and he applied this to everything from the number of meals served each day to how close to freezing it had to be before the heating charms on the building could be renewed. Wong and I were using most of our stipend for improvements, but unfortunately finding someone capable of renovating a magical stronghold is more difficult than checking reviews on Yelp."

"So he's the one to blame for the gothic horror wallpaper and the Urn of Osiris in the front hall?"

"The _Cauldron of the Cosmos_ is a powerful magical artifact-"

Tony blinks up at him in what might be genuine confusion, or at least immoderate exhaustion. "Then why was it in the front hall?"

"It doesn't get along well with others."

"So it's not just your clothing that has behavioral problems."

"No," Stephen glares down at him, albeit without much heat, "the magic of the Cauldron is such that it allows the user to gaze into the past. If it spends too much time in close proximity to any one person or object, you'll only be able to view the history of... that... person..."

"Strange?"

"You leaned against it."

"And your outerwear slapped me," Tony yawns, leaning his head against Stephen's arm. "We established this."

"The Cauldron is a powerful magical artifact whose powers either stem from or are related to the Time Stone - and you got your DNA all over it."

"So you're telling me you think I got pulled into the past because, what? You picked me up before I could cool down? That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard."

"Do you have a better idea?"

"Fuck, no. Magic is weird. Tell me more."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Long story _very_ short: the reason most personal computers have multiple CPUs these days is because after a certain point reducing part size alone stops scaling improvements; frequency scaling (making parts smaller and faster) was the dominant computer architecture paradigm until 2004.  
> 2) Flu shots have been available to the public since 1946, though I'm given to understand the versions in use today weren't developed until the 90s.  
> 3) Valinor is home to the Valar and Maiar in LoTR, of which the Istari (wizards) are a subset... It's really hard to find good wizard references when HP is inappropriate to the time period.  
> 4) Yes, that is a Buffy reference.


	15. Interlude: December 1988 (I)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Home. Or, Maria Stark makes her entrance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternately: Maria Stark is a good mother, Jarvis attempts to be a good tour guide, and Stephen mostly just wonders how he got himself into this situation. 
> 
> I am frankly overwhelmed the the response this fic has gotten - we've passed 10,000 hits. I wish I had a longer chapter to celebrate this milestone, but sadly your author is both ill and impatient, so the rest of what I'd outlined for this chapter will come in the next.

"I have good news and bad news," Tony announces on the first Friday in December, breaking tradition by climbing through the window of Stephen's Harvard dorm room instead of waiting for him to make his way to MIT.

"And I have a perfectly serviceable door."

"The RA on duty wouldn’t let me in - something about _little kids_ not being allowed on campus. Besides, it’s only the third floor."

Stephen closes his eyes and counts to ten in English, French, Cantonese, _and_ Nepali before his completely normal and entirely rational flair of concern at this statement subsides enough for him to speak evenly. "Please tell me you’ve managed to build a suit in your dormitory since Tuesday and that you did _not_ climb up the drainpipe of a building built in 1763."

"I’m pretty sure the drainpipe has been replaced since then," Tony says, completely missing the point. "But, speaking of suits, you need one."

"Pardon?" If Tony thinks for one instant he's going to allow himself to be stuffed inside some sort of tin can, he's got another thing coming.

"Actually, you need more like seven."

"What _are_ you talking about?"

"My news: the Australian Consulate is happy to replace your _unfortunately lost_ passport, which is mostly good, but since we're stuck in the Mesozoic Era, you have to go to their nearest offices to do it, which is mostly irritating. The bad news comes in when you consider that the nearest consulate in New York, meaning that we've no good way of getting out of the company Christmas party."

Stephen doesn't sputter, but it's a near thing. "Tony, is this your way of asking me to _meet your parents_?"

"What? Too soon? I know most advice columnists suggest waiting six months to a year after starting a relationship, but honestly I feel-"

"Tony."

Tony's teasing smile falls away. "Believe me," he says, "if I could think of a way of keeping you from ever having to meet Howard, I would. But I can't put you on my cards without parental signature and I've withdrawn enough cash from my accounts setting everything up that Obi's starting to ask some uncomfortable questions, so if you want to get your passport before the summer, you'll have to come back to Long Island with me for the break."

"You could have just lead with that."

"I would have, but _somebody_ got all touchy about me climbing up the side of building."

Stephen sighs. "You do realize I'm going to make you get a tetanus booster after that stunt, right?"

" _After_ we see Giacomo. Howard may be the hard case, but Maman's the one who insists on dressing for dinner. Also," he holds out his hands and wiggles the fingers, "I wore gloves, so it's not like I really _need_ a booster."

"Do I really need seven suits?"

"Do you want me to list the events we'll be dragged to chronologically or by average net worth of the attendees?"

"Then you really need a tetanus booster."

 

 

The Long Island Mansion, as Tony calls it, is located in Nassau County, twenty-five miles from Midtown Manhattan - and roughly half-hour from the site of Howard Stark's original Long Island home, which had burnt down following an incident with a weapons prototype and a flamingo. It had been built by John Shaffer Phipps in 1903 to provide a proper British home to his proper British bride and been purchased by Howard Stark in 1959 with the intent of doing the same. This would apparently take some time, as he would not wed Maria Giunone Carbonell on the grounds until 1963.

(" _Sorry_ ," Tony mouths approximately fifteen minutes after Stephen walks through the door. " _Jarvis really likes giving the tour_.")

Tony would be born on the grounds in 1974 against the express wishes of his father, who would have much preferred the event take place in a hospital. That same decade, after a near-incident with another weapons prototype, Howard Stark's private labs would be moved offsite.

(" _In my defense_ -" is as far as Tony gets before Jarvis swiftly reminds him that just because one _can_ break the security on Howard's labs doesn't mean that one _should_ , let alone use it as an opportunity to _improve_ upon one's father's designs - an action which immediately endears him to Stephen for life.)

Although the home would remain the family's primary residence, beginning in 1981 Maria would open the house and gardens to the public for part of the year, with the proceeds going towards the Stark Foundation.

"Columbia Pictures have recently reached out to Mister and Missus Stark regarding use of the property in a film adaptation of Edith Wharton's _Age of Innocence_ ," Jarvis announces when they _finally_ reach the conclusion of the tour - the West Porch, which might otherwise have passed for a solarium if not for the marble colonnades located at regular intervals and the intricately carved hardwood ceiling, where a woman no older than Tony had once been sits at a piano, playing a complicated piece Stephen is somewhat ashamed to be unable to identity. "I do believe that Missus Stark intends to agree, provided filming does not interfere with her charity schedule."

"The producer was so complimentary towards my gardens," the woman says, speaking with the faintest of French accents. "How could I possibly say no?" Though everything about the woman is pressed and polished, with nary strand of pale blonde hair out of its proper place, her entire face lights up when she sees Tony. "There you are, _mon trésor_. How was university?" 

Tony doesn't answer. Instead, he flings himself at his mother, pulling her into a hug that seems much too tight for her delicate frame. " _Maman, tu m'as manqué._ "

" _Tu m'as manqué aussi, mon cher garçon,_ " Missus Stark replies, clearly surprised but unwilling to question the sudden burst of affection, before pressing a kiss to the top of her son's head. "But let's not be rude. Introduce me to your guest, Anthony."

Tony pulls away, but stays as close as he can get away with, perching beside her on the piano bench - and offering Stephen a look that promises bitter retribution if he says one word about it. "Maman, this is my good friend, Stephen Strange. He's going to be one of the top neurosurgeons in the world one day. Stephen, this is my mother, Maria Carbonell Stark. We've caught her in the middle of afternoon practice - she studied at the Royal College of Music and still performs in Europe when she has the chance. You two should definitely talk music sometime."

"Do you play, Stephen?"

"No," Tony snorts, "but he knows everything about every piece of music made since 1958."

"I am almost certain Stephen can speak for himself, _mon trésor_ ," Missus Stark admonishes, softening her words with a smile as smoothes back a few wayward strands of Tony's hair, "and he should. You must be quite a gifted young man to keep up with my Anthony. I believe he mentioned you are reading for three degrees?"

"Maman!"

"There is nothing wrong with taking pride in your friend's accomplishments."

Wondering when - and why - Tony would have found time to tell his mother about him, Stephen says in the face of his friend's red-faced sputtering, "Yes, though I admit I'm considering picking up a fourth."

"Do you have a subject in mind?"

"Not yet."

As grateful as he is for the opportunity to be a surgeon again, Stephen will be the first to admit that some nights, when he's too restive for sleep and Simon's presence in their dorm precludes practicing the Mystic Arts, he sometimes wonders if it's really worth it. He loves medicine, loved being a surgeon - but surgical skills won't stop Thanos.

Tony says he'd lived his life planning only for the next disaster once and that they shouldn't make that same mistake again, but he's not the one looking down the barrel of a decade of schooling just to get back to the starting line. He only needs to invent to prove his academic prowess. No matter how many papers Stephen might chose to publish, no one will trust a doctor who has not completed medical school - and the process is significantly less stimulating the second time around.

Leaving for the Kamar-Taj the moment his passport is in hand might be better for everyone - however reluctant he may be to leave Tony. 

"Then perhaps you'll allow me to teach you something of the piano before you leave. If it's intellectual restlessness you suffer from, perhaps music will allay your phrenic disquiet as it does mine." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Hollis is one of the freshmen dormitories at Harvard, built in 1763. It was chosen solely for its age.  
> 2) I've used the Old Westbury Gardens as inspiration for the Stark's Long Island Mansion because the gardens are beautiful. In our universe, it because a museum home following Phipps' death; in theirs, Howard bought because he could. According to Wikipedia, parts of _The Age of Innocence_ were filmed there.  
> 3) For some reason, the glimpse we see of Maria Stark at the start of CACW made me think of her as more French than the canonical Italian. I've compromised by making her Niçois in this fic - Nice went back and forth between France and Italy for a long time, so we get the best of both worlds. I also have her as being significantly younger than Howard, having been born in 1945, just shy of nine months after the liberation of the city by American paratroopers.  
> 4) The internet tells me that _mon bonheur_ is _my happiness_ in French and an appropriate thing to call one's child. (This is apparently Not True, and Actual French Speakers have encouraged me to change this to _mon trésor_ , or _my treasure_.) As for the rest... I have been assured by Kmy_leprovost that this version is correct, and I'm not changing it again.   
> 5) _Billboard_ started putting out the Hot 100 in 1958.  
> 6) As I think I mentioned in another endnote, 3 years of undergraduate + 4 years of med school + 7 years of residency is a _long time_ to become a neurosurgeon, especially if you were once one and have an eidetic memory. Intellectual restlessness is to be expected.


	16. Interlude: December 1988 (II)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> High Society. Or, two parties and one revelation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternately: in which Stephen and Tony do a lot of talking.
> 
> I'm disgusted with myself for how long this took to turn out, but being ill does little for my writing ability other than cause me to change the outline for the chapter 12 times a minute. I'm not sure the end works as well as I'd hoped, but...

Over the next five days, Stephen meets, in no particular order: the current and former Chairs of the Federal Reserve, two future mayors of New York City, the Assistant Director in Charge of the local FBI field office, enough flag officers to field a football team; the district attorneys for New York, Kings, Queens, Nassau, and Suffolk counties, and all of their associated wives, children, and mistresses.

He's also introduced to: seventeen painters, twelve authors, three sculptors, nineteen musicians of various persuasions, sixteen heiresses, nine actors, eight real estate tycoons, six Formula One drivers, two ambassadors, and enough C-Suite executives that he manages to lose count after the twenty-third senior vice president.

He does not, however, meet Howard Stark.

"That's a _good_ thing," Tony murmurs sleepily when Stephen questions the absence in the early hours of the sixth morning before tucking himself more firmly into Stephen's side. Although it has to be nearly dawn, the current event Tony's dragged him to - the annual Stark Foundation Goodwill Gala, held for the twenty-fifth year running at the Algonquin Hotel - is still going strong. The fact that no one has approached their particular corner of the hotel bar in several hours is a minor miracle entirely attributable to the misuse of the Mystic Arts. "It means he's working. If he's working, he's happy. It's when he's home and playing happy family that you need to worry."

"Saying things like that is _exactly_ why I worry."

"I know what you're thinking, and it's not that. He never- Howard's not a bad man. He's not a particularly _good_ husband or father, but he's not a bad man."

"If you say so," Stephen says, not bothering to hide his disbelief.

"Trust me, there are times I think I've spent my whole life trying to decide how to feel about that man. I spent so many years _hating_ him... but now I think at some point he just got stuck on the idea of legacy. Even if he didn't like the guy, I think he saw what the '54 security hearings did to Oppenheimer's reputation and decided to do whatever it took to secure his own. So he sold the bachelor pad and bought the Gilded Age mansion, married the sophisticated European wife, had the golden son and heir... but he never really wanted any of those things. He certainly never figured out what to do with us."

"If you say so," Stephen repeats, sounding to his own ears even less convinced than before.

"I do." Tony smiles beatifically up at him before bounding out of his seat and tugging Stephen out of his own. "C'mon," he says, leading Stephen through the throngs of people by the hand, "let's go find Hamlet."

"Hamlet?"

"The Algonquin Cat. The hotel always as a Hamlet - unless it has a Miranda. Best part of coming here as a kid. I'd show up, make nice for an hour, then hole up in a suite with the cat for the rest of the night. Hell, did it a couple times as an adult too."

"Ah, the glamorous life of the rich and famous."

"Mock all you want, Merlin, but don't think I didn't see you cast your little Notice-Me-Not spell in there."

"I didn't exactly see you complaining."

"Of course not - you're better company than ninety percent of the people here."

Stephen feels himself flush. "Of course I am," he barefacedly states around his _completely irrational_ and _utterly ludicrous_ mortification. "Beyond the fact that everyone else here was chosen for the size of their wallets over the breadth of their intellect, who else is going to argue with you about supercars that haven't been built yet?"

"You can't prefer a car you _crashed_ , Stephen," Tony sputters, his look of amusement giving way to the particular indignation unique to engineers confronted with inferior technology. "It's like saying _sure, the_ Titanic _sank, but it's still my favorite ocean liner_."

"I think you're missing the point."

"No, I got the point just fine. It's just on hold for a moment while I remind you why the Bugatti Chiron is superior to the Lamborghini Huracán in every way."

"Just what do you think the point _is_?"

"Stephen, sweetheart," Tony says carefully, squeezing their still joined hands, "what have we spent most of this party doing?"

"Arguing about supercars for some reason."

"And what did we spend most of the one at The Plaza yesterday doing?"

"Stealing napkins from other guests to work on your design for a trans-femoral myoelectric prosthesis."

If Missus Stark had not already won Stephen's eternal admiration for the way she so clearly adores her son, she would have gained it then for the easy way she accepted the two dozen cloth napkins with carefully-inked diagrams to be smuggled out of the hotel in her clutch that evening - and then presented them both with paper notebooks that could fit in their suit jackets at brunch the next morning without additional comment.

"And the thing Wednesday at the Waldorf Astoria?"

"Talking music with this year's International Debutantes until that one girl's boyfriend started being an ass about my lack of _proper high society qualifications_ , after which you started going on loudly about the op-ed piece I wrote on healthcare reform for _The Crimson_ being picked up by the NEJM until you caught the attention of some of the vice deans from Columbia and NYC Langone."

"Uh-huh. And are you sensing the theme here?"

"Beyond the fact that your mother has succeeded in dragging us to more parties in the last five days than either of our roommates managed all last semester?"

"Beyond that," Tony urges with an uncharacteristic amount of patience.

Stephen considers this. "I know you said you had no interest in reviving your playboy reputation, but at this rate you're going to be labeled as a wallflower if you keep hiding in dark corners with me at these events."

Tony gives him a look at suggests Stephen's being intentionally obtuse. "Think about it," he says, giving his hand one final squeeze before letting go. "Now, I just saw someone whose career I need to ruin, so you stay here and do that, and I'll be right back. Oh!" Tony shouts over his shoulder as he disappears into sea of partygoers, "And don't forget to keep an eye out for the cat!"

 

It's not until that evening, when they're at the Stark Industries Forty-Ninth Annual Christmas party, that things start falling in place.

"Is your father even at this party?"

"Only if you consider the labs as part of the party," Tony shrugs, helping himself to another puff pastry. "Again, just be happy that he's working - or, actually, if you're going to go to all the trouble to be worked up over something, be happy that I haven't built a suit yet. Things like this remind me why I became Iron Man in the first place."

"Why?" Stephen asks in complete bewilderment. Tony's told him, well, a _less sanitized_ version of his superhero origins than the story future media loved to sell, but the only thing his captivity and this party seem to have in common is the frankly alarming amount of Stark weaponry in the general vicinity.

"See that man talking to Maman? The one with the bad combover? That's Alexander Pierce, current Undersecretary of State for International Security Affairs. He's so good at it, he'll hold the position under the next three presidents - and go on to decline a Nobel Peace Prize because _peace isn't an achievement, it's a responsibility_. You wouldn't think he'd be on the Christmas card list given that his job is all about arms control and disarmament, but he's also a member of the World Security Council, which makes him and Howard bosom buddies.

"But it gets better."

"Better than the president's advisor for nuclear nonproliferation deciding to nuke Manhattan - or was he off the WSC by then?"

Tony leans in. It's unnecessary with the way he's already perched on the arm of Stephen's chair, but he does it anyway. "Oh no, he definitely had a hand in that decision, not that anyone bothered to call him out on the hypocrisy. The best part is: it's all a cover. He's HYDRA, has been since the beginning, and has been using his position to undermine everything he supposedly stands for for the last eight years. I think he's the only one-

"No. There, by the bar. Mitchell Carson: his PMC is theoretically a SHIELD cover for their STRIKE teams, but after the Uprising he used it to make a good go of being a roving warlord - no territorial claims, but a list of war crimes that make me very uncomfortable having him around young children."

"How long until we can do something about them?"

"Not soon enough," Tony grouses, hiding his scowl behind his glass. "Unless you can scry for the proof we need, it's our word against theirs. Maybe if-

"Oh no. We've been spotted." He papers on his best smile as an older Hispanic man approaches their corner of the balcony trailed by a young woman in a candy apple red dress who looks both vaguely familiar and like she'd rather be anywhere else. "Doctor Sepúlveda, good to see you again!"

" _Good to see you again_?" the man - Doctor Sepúlveda - repeats, halfway between laughter and indignation. "You send me schematics that will revolutionize the electronics industry and all you have to say is _good to see you again_? No, I won't allow it. We must talk science. Save the pleasantries for after you win the Grace Murray Hopper Award." With that, Doctor Sepúlveda pulls Tony off the arm of Stephen's chair and physically leads him back downstairs, towards a cluster of high-spirited engineers who cheer at their approach.

Okay then.

"Sorry about that," the woman in the red dress says. "Father's not usually like this, but apparently whatever designs Tony sent him this morning will - and I quote - _make Stark Industries the only name in personal computing, even if we have to go behind Mister Stark's back to do it_ \- so he's a little bit excited. Mind if I sit?"

"Not at all."

"I'm Matilde Sepúlveda, by the way. Father's the Head of Electronic Systems, which is how I got dragged to this. Don't be mad if I start nodding off on you - I was on call last night and the _last_ thing I want to be right now is awake, but Father said it would be a _good networking opportunity_. So please tell me you're a budding lawyer or rocket scientist or _something_ so I can make him happy when he finally remembers my existence."

No wonder she looks familiar - in the future, Matilde would be Chairwoman of the Department of Neurosurgery at NCU Langone; her revolutionary research into minimally-invasive skull base surgery would go a long way towards his decision to make that hospital number one on his rank list in the original timeline. She's just twenty years younger than Stephen's ever seen her and looks _very_ different with long hair.

"Just an aspiring doctor, I'm afraid."

"Even better," she grins and pulls him into a conversation about medical schools and, once she realizes he knows what he's talking about, some of the minor procedures she's been allowed to perform as a surgical intern.

It's utterly fascinating - it has been _lifetimes_ since he's been able to talk with anyone about the brain on the level he'd once been accustomed to, even if the _cutting edge advancements_ they're discussing now are standard practices he'd learned in medical school - but some part of him wishes Tony were still with him-

Which is just ridiculous.

Correction: it's _positively insane._ Just because he's spent the entirety of every other party they've been dragged to this week with Tony doesn't mean Stephen _needs_ his presence to make it through unscathed. He was once a world-renowned surgeon; he knows how to conduct himself at these sorts of things, even if the guest list tends more toward the _Social Register_ than the American Medical Association. He just enjoys Tony's company, that's all. He's had a better time hiding with Tony in out of the way corners, arguing supercars or discussing music or plotting universal salvation, then he ever did at any speaking engagement with... Christine...

 _Oh_.

Oh _no_.

"Stephen? Are you all right? You just trailed off in the middle of your sentence."

"I'm fine, Matilde. I just realized something."

 _When had he fallen in love with Tony Stark_?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) I went with the Algonquin Hotel for this because it: auto-populated when I googled "famous NYC hotels"; was home to the Algonquin Round Table, of which Dorothy Parker - quoted in chapter 12 - was a part; and because the blue lights in the hotel bar reminded me of the hyperdrive on Ebony Maw's ship. It also has cats, which sealed the deal. (Plus, Nice is home to a jazz festival and the hotel has a jazzy feel, so it all tied together for me.)  
> 2) Everything I know about cars comes from _The Grand Tour_ , which caused me to fall in love with the Chiron, whose top speed is "electronically limited to 261 mph for safety reasons [...] as the manufacturer concluded that no tyre currently manufactured would be able to handle the stress at the top speed the Chiron is capable of achieving," while the Huracán is the car Stephen was driving at the time of his accident.  
> 3) NEJM is _The New England Journal of Medicine_. While probably highly unlikely that a college undergrad paper would be picked up by such a publication, this is a universe where Bruce Banner somehow manages to get 7 PhDs before becoming the Hulk at age 34. So it may be possible.  
> 4) The Undersecretary of State for International Security Affairs is a real State Department position, serving as senior advisor to the president and secretary of state on maters of "Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Disarmament," though it got a name change in 1993.  
> 5) PMC is shorthand for _private military company_ a la Blackwater.  
> 6) The ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award is "awarded to the outstanding young computer professional of the year, selected on the basis of a single recent major technical or service contribution. The candidate must have been 35 years of age or less at the time."
> 
> Thus concludes our second interlude. Now, back to 2015 for the very end of A1.
> 
> UPDATE: [little_manatee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/little_manatee/pseuds/little_manatee) has been gracious enough to grace me with art for this chapter. Check it out [here](https://66.media.tumblr.com/6cfbffdd584d6ffbaa3b28cb57019ddd/tumblr_prjxuvi3vf1sgm8wko1_r1_1280.pnj)!


	17. 2 May, 2015 (IX)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aftermath. Or, we finally say farewell to the Battle of New York.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternately: Tony has lived his entire life in the spotlight. Now, he's going to die in it. 
> 
> Or, no one actually dies, except maybe Peter after he sees his YouTube subscriber count.

Tony has never added a parachute to his suits for two reasons:

Firstly, because most of his battles don’t take place at heights where one would make a difference. Parachutes need space to open. Anything that could hit him high enough for one to be of use means he has bigger problems to worry about, usually along the lines of imminent death.

Secondly, because he would never be able to deploy one. The old suits just didn't have the manual dexterity for a manual release, not after loosing power. Shifting to nanotechnology merely shifted the problem, for while it's fully capable of forming a functioning parachute without the need for a ripcord, the power requirements exceed even his excessive emergency protocols.

So he falls.

Trapped in a dead suit.

Through hard vacuum.

Unable to move.

Hypoxic, but-

Awake.

Aware.

Tumbling-

There - the Chitauri mothership exploding in a retina-searing flash. If there’s any justice in the universe Thanos will be be aboard this time, but Tony knows that's the worst kind of wishful thinking.

There - Manhattan disappearing as the hole in space slowly cinches closed, too fast for him but too slow for the wave of radiation nipping at his heels.

And, there - the darkness between galaxies. This is the furthest mankind has ever been from Earth, far outstripping Apollo 13's paltry four hundred thousand kilometers. At least he'll die setting a new record-

Fourth human-being to die in space.

Stephen will never forgive him.

Is his black box transmitting?

Is anybody picking up the signal? Are the people back on Earth able to see the threat that is coming?

Are they watching him die on their TV screens right now?

Should he-?

Light.

There’s light.

All around.

He’s made it.

He’s made it through-

He’ll die on Earth, at least.

The wind buffets him-

He’ll die breathing air.

_We rot in the molds of Venus. We retch at her tainted breath. Foul are her flooded jungles, crawling with unclean death._

There will be no miraculous catch, not this time. He’s already reached terminal velocity. He’ll hit the ground in seconds - if he doesn’t strike a building first.

_We pray for one last landing on the globe that gave us birth. Let us rest our eyes on the fleecy skies and the cool, green hills of earth._

Green.

He can see-

Pain.

His ribs-

Fuck the gaping hole in his chest. Fuck his-

He’s slowing-

He’s-

Blue.

Blue sky.

Has there ever been a more beautiful sight?

" _Remote connection established. Initializing emergency deactivation,_ " JARVIS' cool voice breaks into his thoughts.

"Fuck, that’s going to bruise,” he gasps as the armor melts away, emergency protocols causing the nanotech to settle in thick bands about his lower arms rather than retreating into their usual housings - the idea being that, if he’s ever downed without the suit, he has a last method of defense. (The first time he’d tested them in the lab, Stephen had given him his driest look and told him to leave the bulletproof bracelets to the Amazons.) “Thanks for the save, Big Green, but, fuck."

Hulk roars in what Tony chooses to interpret as agreement.

"Son of a gun."

"Son of a gunmaker, actually. No, wait, that was awful. Forget I said that. Let’s just-"

 _Awake, arise, or be for ever fall'n_.

Slowly, painfully, Tony climbs to his feet, and gets back to work.

 

 

A week after the invasion, a video appears on Peter Parker's offical YouTube account - the only original content beyond the Stark Expo '15 opening ceremonies whose posting largely went unnoticed in the aftermath of everything else. The video opens to a black screen and **_05.02.15_** in simple, white text reminiscent of the **_I ❤ New York_** logos before cutting, almost violently, to recorded newscast.

" _In breaking news, an unknown force has launched an attack on New York City. Residents are encouraged to to stay in their homes unless ordered otherwise by emergency personnel..._ "

". _..the alien invaders, identified only as the Chitauri by sources inside the government, appear to have centered their attack around Stark Tower in Midtown Manhattan..._ "

" _...New York City police have been spotted alongside National Guardsmen..._ "

" _...the Hulk, last seen ten years ago during the Harlem Terror..._ "

" _...alien identified only as as Thor, who appears able to control lightning..._ "

" _...Captain America, believed killed in action in 1945..._ "

" _...Iron Man, also known as Stark International CEO Tony Stark, has been spotted piloting a nuclear missile into to the rift above the city..._ "

The video whip pans almost frenetically from newscast to newscast, touching on all the major networks before alighting on-

" _...live footage being transmitted by Tony Stark's Iron Man from the far side of the portal of what appears to be a colossal space- My God! He's done it,_ " the reporter providing voiceover chokes back a sob of relief. " _Iron Man has done it. We're seeing images now of the alien spaceship engulfed by a massive fireball. Already we're receiving reports from all corners of the city of the invaders falling where they stand..._ "

" _...cleanup efforts have begun across downtown Manhattan..._ "

" _...SHEILD agents Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton..._ "

" _...two hundred forty-three dead..._ "

" _...man with apparently mystical powers responsible for closing the portal has been identified as famed neurosurgeon Stephen Strange..._ "

" _...casualties of The Battle of New York continue to flood area hospitals three days after fighting ends..._ "

" _...five days later, air traffic is returning to the New York Metropolitan area..._ "

" _...Tony Stark announced today that the Maria Stark Foundation will be committing three million dollars towards relief efforts in New York City, along with a further two million of his own fortune..._ "

" _...Midtown citizens are speaking out about being rescued by Queens superhero Spider-Man following the battle..._ "

" _...death count has been raised to three hundred seventy-four..._ "

" _...the heroic efforts of emergency services personnel..._ "

" _...businesses across Manhattan are reopening..._ "

" _...praising doctors and nurses who have worked nonstop since fighting began..._ "

The video stops, switching to voiceover as it lingers on the Manhattan skyline as seen from across the Hudson. The outlines of both the _USS Harry S. Truman_ and _USNS Comfort_ can be seen in the foreground, swarming with life even as night sets in.

" _...schools in lower Manhattan remain closed..._ "

" _...residents are encouraged to utilize public transportation..._ "

" _...are being called The Avengers..._ "

" _...The Avengers..._ "

" _...The Avengers..._ "

As night falls, the text **_#newyorkstrong_** appears on screen.

Twenty-four hours later, the video has almost thirty million views. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Gravity must be able to move through the portal, as Tony is capable of falling through it. It is highly unlikely enough atmosphere to make drag an issue would, so Tony reaches terminal velocity very fast. I've made some efforts at calculating the speed, but it relies on a bunch of assumptions, so... no idea the validity. But the fastest speed anyone has skydived is ~600 kph. Assuming Stark Tower is ~1130' and the portal is twice again that height... You're looking to fall just over 1 km very, very fast. Even assuming he falls no faster than the average skydiver, ~50.6 m/s, that's just a 20 second fall. Not a lot of reaction time. -- However, a skydiver only experiences 1G, excluding the action of opening the parachute. Which means no G-Loc. Which means any unconsciousness Tony experiences is from hypoxia. Assume a smaller hole in the suit, as I have, and you get full consciousness all the way down.  
> 2) The crew of Apollo 13 "swung around the far side of the moon at an altitude of 158 miles, putting them 248,655 miles away from Earth." This is the farthest mankind has ever traveled. The three crew members of Soyuz 11 are the only humans known to have died in space. All other spaceflight-related fatalities are considered not to have occurred in outer space.  
> 3) The two quotes at the beginning are from Robert A Heinlein's "The Green Hills of Earth".  
> 4) The third is from _Paradise Lost_.


	18. 2 May, 2015 (X)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nitroglycerin. Or, you put a handful of independent, strong-minded, stubborn people in a room together and things are only going to end one of two ways.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternately: it's best practice not to trust either assassins and supersoldiers, not even those claiming to be teammates. 
> 
> Or, in which your author attempts to keep her low-sodium diet regarding CA:CW, but may not succeed. (She did however see _Captain Marvel_ about halfway through writing this and has not enjoyed an MCU movie so much in ages. I almost feel bad for killing off Fury. No spoilers here, but expect to see something when we hit our '90s interludes.)

"I need coffee," Tony announces after he remembers how to get to the public entrance of the Tower from the Park Avenue Viaduct and has lifted the lockdown long enough for Bruce, Rogers, and the spies to follow him inside like particularly grimy ducklings. He also needs a new arc reactor, but without caffeine he won't make it that far. Liquid propellent before solid. "Too much of this day has happened before coffee."

" _I’ve already started a pot in the café, Boss_ ," FRIDAY - beautiful FRIDAY, who usually leaves the running of the Towers to her big brother unless his processors are being taxed, as they probably are by the Iron Legion's ongoing rescue and evacuation efforts - chirps, sounding ever so slightly harried beneath her usual _joie de vivre_. While Tony had not coded her to be his secretary, FRIDAY's role as SI's primary communications system means she often ends up filling the role when the phone banks spill over, as they probably are after his stunt with the nuke. He owes her an upgrade when things die down - her and JARVIS both.

Tony tilts his head towards the nearest security camera and says, "I love you, baby girl," with as much feeling as he can summon while his chest is slowly turning colors he’d forgotten flesh could take, and crosses the atrium.

(Tony adores the the atrium of the New York Tower - and not just because _Architectural Digest_ once described it _as if someone had summoned the spirit of Frank Lloyd Wright and asked him to redesign the Guggenheim using only ultra-modern materials._ It's dark and sleek and pretentious in all the best ways, the rawness of its design made up for by the elegance of the tech - and, on days when aliens aren't attacking the city, fill to bursting with tourists and school groups. He'd say it's his favorite public aspect of the Tower, but it's also the only part open to the public; it's definitely his favorite architectural deviation from the original timeline, though.)

"Tony," Bruce says in something that might be best described as flagging glee, "are the bottom ten floors of your Tower a _science center_?"

"The first five floors are part science center, part science museum, part history of modern warfare," Tony tells him with pride, slipping behind the counter of the café and finding the promised carafe. "The top is mostly Maman's art collection, but that's all promised to proper galleries whenever we expand our other exhibits. Steph and I figured that if the Smithsonian was going to keep calling and asking for stuff, we might as well get ahead of the game. Things sort of snowballed from there."

Romanoff snorts in obvious derision, as if she's been waiting for the perfect moment to lance his ego after daring to survive his encounter with the laws of gravitation. "You mean you realized it would finally give you a place to show off your Wall of One-upmanship."

"Their _what_ now?" Rogers asks with equally obvious disapproval.

"It’s this thing Stark and Strange have been doing since college. They have this whole points system going to see who can win the most awards, publish the most articles, get the most patents. Basically, it’s a shrine to both their egos, but for some reason the media laps it up."

"I marvel at the way you can take anything and cast it in the worst possible light."

"It amazes me that you think there’s a positive spin that can be put on it."

Tony _could_ defend himself. He _could_ explain that the Wall is the end result of Tony and Stephen finally introducing their freshmen roommates and making the mistake of leaving them alone together, only to come back hours later to find Simon and Rhodey in the middle of a proud papa pissing match. Simon had felt, quite naturally, that Stephen's three planned degrees, series of op-eds picked up by the NEJM, and newly-awarded Bowdoin and Joseph Garrison Parker prizes qualified him as _most academically insane roommate_. Rhodey had disagreed, citing Tony's own absurd number of degrees-in-progress and even more absurd number of patents pending. He _could_ explain had all been so fond and ridiculous that Tony had just left them to it, and that _no one_ but Simon, Rhodey, and the devoted interns who curate the Wall for them take it seriously-

-but Tony is done explaining himself to people who call him traitor twisting the knife in his back-

(That's probably uncharitable. This is a different timeline. The only thing these three have done is enter his company under false pretenses. And berate his husband for failing to save Fury's life. And try to kill his nephew under the orders of an alien god.)

( _I don't wanna go. I don't wanna go._ )

-so he doesn't say any of that. Instead he refills his coffee cup and says, "Yeah, I’m not doing this. You three are welcome to stay here while you wait for SHIELD to come get you - bathrooms are that way, help yourself to the cafe and gift shop; try not to bleed on any of the exhibits. Bruce, I’m going upstairs. You can hang out down here or come with, your choice."

"This isn't a game, Stark," Rogers snaps as he passes. "Loki needs to be-"

"Arrested?"

"Yes!"

"Are you planning on arresting Barton and Selvig?" he asks idly, sipping his coffee.

The face Rogers makes is so appalled it's almost comical. "Of course not!"

"Then you can't arrest Loki. Just hear me out: if by some miracle his case ever got to trial, the first thing the opposition is going to do is point to the two of them and say _if somebody is responsible for their actions while under mind control, why haven't those two been detained?_

"Not, of course, that you have the power to detain anyone - SHIELD's an _intelligence agency_ , not law enforcement. I don't blame you for forgetting; they tend to do that a lot themselves. It was this big thing in the late Nineties. Very embarrassing for a lot of people. They probably leave it out of their introductory packets for that very reason. You should probably also ask them about their HYDRA infestation. It was also a big thing in the Nineties. I still don't know to this day whose ass Fury had to kiss to keep it from being shutdown back then. I guess now we'll never know."

Rogers lunges forward-

-but stops when Romanoff lays a staying hand across his chest. "Stark's just trying to get a rise out of you. Don't sink down to his level by reacting."

"Yeah, that was in poor taste. I never liked Fury, but I respect what he was able to accomplish," Tony admits, clutching at his now empty coffee cup to keep from rubbing at his chest and the scar that will _never_ exist, "even if he did it in the most underhanded, manipulative way possible."

"Like you're doing now?"

"The only thing I'm doing is going up to my penthouse, checking in on my family, and then tracking down the Fire Chief and seeing how I can be of most use to rescue and recovery efforts."

"You're forgetting the Tesseract, Tony."

Tony gives her his most winsome smile, because if Romanoff's going to talk to him like he's her sixteen-year-old son she just caught sneaking in after curfew with the keys to daddy's Camero still in his pocket, he's going to be an ass right back. "Funny story, that. You see, according to the maritime laws of salvage, the Tesseract became Howard's the moment he fished it out of the ocean. He loaned it - note the key word there - to SHIELD, but when he died it became mine along with the rest of his estate. I've been asking for it back for nearly a quarter century now, but until now they've always claimed it was _missing_. Convenient, right? I'm a little surprised you don't remember, seeing as how those contracts were among those you tried to access when you infiltrated my company under false pretenses."

"You can't be serious-" Rogers begins.

"I know! I really want to know how SHIELD thought the whole _sexy lawyer corporate espionage_ routine was going to work out for them. Banking on the _all bisexuals cheat_ trope being true was both risky _and_ insulting."

"The Tesseract is too dangerous-"

"For what? The likes of me?"

"You're a wild card-"

"And you're not? You, who literally-" Tony catches himself. "No, I said I wasn't going to do this and I'm not. I do not have to justify myself to either of you and I'm not going to. I am going upstairs and I'm telling Thor to take Loki and the Tesseract back to Asgard, and I hope never to see either one of you until the next world-ending event."

Rogers stands rigid as Tony crosses the final few feet to the elevator bank, all noble fury and patriotic disappointment. "That is a decision we should be making as a team."

"Good thing we're not a team then," Tony says, stepping into the elevator that's already waiting - Bruce already having found his way inside. "Get me the fuck out of here, Fri."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Between re-reading "Next Big Thing" and watching a documentary on the Vietnam War I somehow became very attached to the idea of the bottom of Stark Tower being a museum that looked like a modern Guggenheim. I figure there would be a Science of Speed exhibit - to take advantage of their inevitable collection of supercars; - one on Rogers - because you know Howard had all that memorabilia; - plus stuff on SI and the Starks and Iron Man, along with all the usual science center stuff... (Actually, I have an ongoing list of exhibits I need to include somehow). Yes, he did build it larger than it really needed for exhibits on other heroes in the future.  
> 2) The Joseph Garrison Parker Prize is awarded "to undergraduates who intend to enter the profession of medicine and 'who has unusual breadth of interests outside the specifically premedical courses.'” The Bowdoin Prizes (in this case for Natural Sciences) are "some of Harvard's oldest and most prestigious student awards, are designed to recognize essays of originality and high literary merit, written in a way that engages both specialists and non-specialists."  
> 3) According to the CIA's own website, "The CIA, unlike the FBI, has no law enforcement authority. The Agency’s mission is foreign intelligence collection and analysis." I figure that SHIELD is the same, thus no jurisdiction.


	19. 4 May, 2015 (I)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emergency Assisted Demolition. Or, the aftermath of the invasion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternately: in which the author gets sidetracked, viciously tries to get back on topic, and may fail to achieve anything with this chapter. 
> 
> This chapter has taken a couple of very weird twists and turns, most of which I cut out at various points because they made no sense in retrospect, or were devolutions into madness. At this point, it has become _post or delete everything_ , because that's how it goes with me, and I elected to post. Hopefully it's worth the wait.

Monday dawns grey and dreary, spitting rain on relief efforts across Manhattan and distorting the wireframe on the holographic table in front of them. Despite this, the reality of the situation is painfully obvious. None of them, however, wants to be the first to admit it.

"It's going to have to come down," Fire Marshal Jack Driscoll says at last, pulling off his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose. Three days of soot and stubble have given him a wild, grizzled air at odds with his normally retiring, professorial nature.

"It's going to have to come down," Tony agrees, glancing across the street at the massive hole in the eastern side of the Bank of America Tower, all too reminiscent of the September 11 attacks. "The only reason it hasn't collapsed already is because of some damn good engineering. Somebody better give those guys a prize - if it had gone down when that Leviathan severed those load bearing columns, we'd be looking at hundreds of fatalities even with the evacuation."

"Yours is a happy nature, Doctor Stark," Alex Scarpa, Commissioner for the New York City Fire Department, sighs from where she leans heavily against the nearby waffle stand.

"I'm still riding the high of everything between here and Hammarskjöld Plaza having not been burnt to cinders by the fireball of a nuclear explosion. There is nothing you can say to me right now that will dampen my mood, especially since we should be able to bring it down flat, without damaging any of the neighboring buildings."

"Then I’d suggest avoiding City Hall."

"The mayor still frothing at the mouth?"

"Like you wouldn’t believe," the commissioner says, removing her helmet to retie her hair more securely out of her face. "Bad as this is, it’s going to turn into a worse political shit storm. The president still hasn't released a statement about the nuke. The longer that goes on, the more likely it is the two of them going to tear the party apart during primaries."

"Campos is going to run against a sitting president of his own party?" That - that's news. Not only would it be a significant deviation from the original timeline, but-

"Politics later, you two. What I want to know is: can we save the subway station?"

"It's not worth it," Scarpa states, replacing her helmet and pushing away from the waffle stand. Though the invasion has aged her visibly, she's still the youngest fire commissioner the city has ever had, and Tony has the distinct impression that she's going to be one of the view who comes out of the invasion smelling like roses. "If we try and fail, we lose man-hours and equipment we can't afford; we succeed, and unseen structural damages could bring the roof of the station down on commuters years later. No, we write the whole thing off and count on the bean counters to find us a way to rebuild."

She turns her attentions on the small band of police officers and fire fighters remaining to their emergency efforts by the city - the majority of their force having been peeled away as the weekend progressed, left behind to contain the sites the fire marshals had deemed salvageable or begin organizing relief efforts for those displaced by _emergency assisted demolitions_ at the others.

"You three, move all this equipment back into the command center in the library. The rest of you should know the drill by now. I don't want to see any civilians on the streets between Broadway and Fifth, but they start digging in their heels, _don't_ force the issue. All eyes are on New York right now and our every action _must_ be above reproach. You are all wearing body cameras. Do not believe that the footage won't be reviewed."

"Yes, Ma’am," they say as one before moving off in groups of two or three.

"Doctor Stark, if you could run the numbers one more time? If we’re going to do this, I want to do this as safely and and soon as possible. I'll signal you when we have the all-clear for demolition."

Tony nods in agreement before taking to the air. JARVIS is already running the simulations, but more data never hurts. "What's the good word, Jay?"

" _The South Asian markets rallied in the last hours of trading, with the NIFTY 50 closing two hundred seven points higher than anticipated. The effects are being felt in the European markets, but the FTSE 100 is still expected to close below six thousand points. The New York Stock Exchange remains determined to reopen Wednesday morning, and FRIDAY has received requests for yourself and Doctor Banner to ring the opening bell._ "

"Not the others?"

" _Doctor Strange has not yet been identified in the media beyond_ the other man with a red cape, _though FRIDAY is monitoring the situation_ -"

" _The internet is going wild, Boss,_ " FRIDAY jumps in like she's been waiting for the excuse - which, knowing her, is entirely possible. " _A couple of the more dedicated communities have already come to the correct conclusion where Doctor Boss is involved, so expect to be seeing that hit mainstream before the end of the week. The weekend news shows had already picked up on Spider-Man being involved in shutting down the portal, but so far the Monday morning broadcasts are_ respecting his desire to maintain anonymity _and just sticking to trying make sense of what the news helicopters were able to catch video of from behind the picket_."

Tony snorts, continuing his lazy corkscrew around the Bank of America Tower, passing in and out of the dark plume of smoke still pouring from the building almost forty-eight hours after the invasion. "That won't last long." 

" _Don't worry about it, Boss! I've got it all under control!_ "

"Never doubted it for an instant, baby girl."

" _Baby Boss is-_ "

A staticky cough cuts across the line.

" _Oops! Sorry, Big Bro_ ," FRIDAY says, not apologetic in the least. " _Be sure to check in later, Boss! You're going to_ love _the conspiracy theories regarding Rogers. There's already a meme. Two words: Shania Twain._ "

" _As I was saying, Sir,_ " JARVIS continues after a beat, reminding Tony as ever of an adult cat forced overlong into proximity with a particularly rambunctious kitten. " _Yours and Doctor Banner's are the only two identities that have been positively confirmed with the public. Speculation is ongoing for the others, with a number of public figures expressing outrage that SHIELD would take advantage of the situation by apparently putting forward one of their own in the guise of Captain America._ "

"They've still not issued a statement?"

" _SHIELD has yet to issue a statement or respond to communions of any kind, despite the Helicarrier having been tentatively identified as the source of the F-35 that launched the W-78 warhead by various military intelligence services._ "

"Keep knocking - if the Helicarrier's gone dark, it's because Hill's got something up her sleeve, and I for one want to know what it is ahead of time."

" _Indeed, Sir._ "

"And tell the NYSE to be realistic - Lower Manhattan may have escaped the worst of the damage, but there's no way they're reopening before next week, unless they plan to airlift in their traders. Tell him I'll be there next Monday, not before. What's next?"

" _Miss Potts-_ "

"The day Pepper needs my help to run the business is the day I patent cold fusion. C'mon, Jay, you know better than this. Don't tell me your processors are getting slow in your old age."

" _Never, Sir_ ," JARVIS answers at his most dry, " _I merely wished to inform you that the Metropolitan Transit Authority and Metro-North have received permission from the disaster coordinator to begin inspection of the damages to Grand Central Station. Miss Potts was able to get permission for a team of engineers to join them to begin damage assessments for Stark Tower, and has announced her intentions to accompany them._ "

"Not seeing the problem here, Jay."

" _Because of the lack of communication from SHIELD, Mister Rogers along with Agents Barton and Romanoff are still in the Tower atrium awaiting pickup._ "

"Well shit."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) The Bank of America Tower was chosen largely because it was a tall building close to the RL MetLife Building other than the Chrysler Building, which in A1 appeared to survive only with a lot of broken glass. As 432 Park Avenue wasn't completed until December 2015 and 30 Hudson Yards won't be finished until March 2019, at the time this chapter takes place it would have been the 3rd tallest building in NYC, 5th tallest in the US, and ~30th tallest in the world.  
> 2) Additionally, to avoid use of real people in fic, which I generally try to avoid if still living, all the OCs mentioned have no basis on actual people.


	20. 4 May, 2015 (II)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Waking. Or, in which Peter is a 14 year old who has been in battle, and Steve is a 24 year old who has just been pulled out of WWII.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternatively: In which the author tried her best to write a Steve POV, then a Peter POV, then some other things, and eventually decided that if she was going to post anything she was going to post the only two bits from the 30 or so version this went through or else delete everything she's ever written. Hopefully, we'll have one more May 2015 chapter, then hit another interlude. 
> 
> I remain overwhelmed by the reactions to this fic - it has very nearly become my most kudo'd fic, with over 16k hits - and I can only hope you all enjoy this installment as well.

" _You sure you don't want me to call someone?_ " FRIDAY asks, her tone taking on that sharp, staticky shrillness that is the digital equivalent of fretful handwringing.

Peter waits until he's sure he's not going to be sick again before lifting his head from the basin of the toilet. "I'm sure," he says and immediately regrets it, as the last of the high-calorie energy bars that had made the bulk of his post-mission meal decides to make itself known again.

" _I really think I should call someone._ "

"Please don't," Peter manages after a few moments of dry-heaving. "It was just a nightmare."

" _This is a little more than_ just a nightmare _, kiddo._ "

"I know, just- Uncle Tony is busy blowing up buildings so they don't fall on people later, and Aunt May and Uncle Stephen are going to be at the hospital for _weeks_. That stuff? It's important. Me? I'm fourteen. I know how to deal with nightmares." He wipes furiously at his tear-stained cheeks. "I just need to wake up and remember that Uncle Tony is alive, that I didn't-"

- _kill him_ , he doesn't say, and fights back another wave of nausea.

" _No one would have blamed you if if Boss hadn't made it back through the portal_ ," FRIDAY tells him, as gently as he's ever heard her say anything.

"I would have blamed me."

" _Kiddo_ -"

"Any chance you'll let me go back out? It doesn't even have to be as Spider-Man - I heard the district commander saying that the Red Cross has basically taken over half of Central Park for relief efforts. Even if it's just handing out meals or putting together supply kits, I need to be out there doing _something_. I can't just sit here for another four hours with nothing to do but _think_ about all the ways things could have gone wrong."

" _I'm sorry, Peter. I'm afraid I can't do that._ "

That manages to startle a laugh out of him, but, "You can quote all the old movies you like, but I don't think it's going to help."

" _You sure? 'Cause I've got access to the entire IMDb database._ "

"I'm sure."

" _You’re killing me here kiddo._ "

"I’m not asking you to keep it a secret forever. I’m just saying... wait until Uncle Tony gets home to tell him. You said he’s nearly finished helping the fire department blow stuff up, right? He’ll be home soon. Calling him now won’t do anything but make him worry."

" _He’d_ want _to worry._ "

"Friday, please."

_"Aright... but you have to do something for me."_

 

 

Steve wakes and, for the first time since finding himself in that SHIELD hospital room (which had been _off_ in so many subtle ways that even now he can not fully explain how he’d known something was wrong even before he started paying attention to the ball game), he doesn’t expect to discover that all of this has been nothing more than a dream.

Maybe it’s that the differences that had been so understated then were unmistakable now: the cool, artificial crispness of the _central air conditioning system_ ; the soft, slick feel of the _synthetic fibers_ in his under armor; the bizarre, almost fantastical way _Howard’s son’s_ home knows Steve’s woken before he’s done more than open his eyes, raising the lights in the gallery he'd chosen to sleep in without so much as a word from him.

Maybe the future is just too fantastical and mundane for him not to believe - long stretches of medical tests and interminable boredom followed by a frantic defense against alien invaders followed by more boredom and the discovery he doesn’t know how to go about mending the futuristic materials of his new uniform.

Or maybe it’s just possible to get used to anything.

 _"Morning, Mister Rogers!_ " Stark’s unfailingly chipper _computer program_ chirrups as he stuffs his feet back into his too stiff boots. " _It’s seven thirty-seven in the morning on Monday, May Fourth, two thousand fifteen. No updates from SHIELD, but Agent Romanoff may have access to information I do not._ "

"Thank you, Friday," he says. Steve still doesn’t know where to look when he addresses her, so keeps his eyes on the large, gilt-framed painting opposite. _The Roses of Heliogabalus (1888) by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema,_ reads the plaque beside it, _detailing the apocryphal tale of guests smothered to death by rose petals at a feast as the Roman emperor Elagabalus (204 - 222 CE) watches on. Gifted by Howard Stark to his wife, Maria, for their fifteenth anniversary._

Beside it is the much smaller _Poppy Flowers (1887) by Vincent Van Gogh. Gifted by Howard Stark to his wife, Maria, for their twenty-first anniversary._ On the other side is _Irises (1889)_ \- also by Van Gogh. _Gifted by Howard Stark to his wife, Maria, for their twenty-fifth anniversary._ The whole exhibition hall is like that - an Emile Vernon still life with carnations for their first anniversary; a landscape with lilies of the valley for their second - all the way up to the fateful white orchids of the final twenty-eighth.

(Steve knows the worth of some of these paintings before the war; he’s hesitant to ask what the contents of this room alone might be valued at today. Director Fury had told him Howard had gone on after the war to to great things, but if what his son said about his death is true, than Steve can’t help but wonder how much of the Anniversary Gallery is just another rich man buying his wife’s silence with expensive gifts - and if he’d really known Howard Stark at all.)

"Is Clint still upstairs?" he asks, still staring at the crush of pink rose petals.

" _Agent Barton has not left the Sculpture Garden since Saturday afternoon,_ " FRIDAY says in a way that, had she been more than a computer program, might have suggested genuine concern. " _If you want to speak with him, I suggest bringing food and water. The supplies he took from the cafe upon arrival are likely nearly depleted._ "

"That’s not likely to make him come out."

" _Perhaps, but it might help him come down._ "

"Down?"

" _You’ll see,_ " she says cheerfully. " _Up the stairs and straight ahead. If you’ve hit the Nike, you’ve gone too far._ "

Unlike the Anniversary Gallery, the Sculpture Garden is not one long hall hidden inside a rabbit's warren of other long, artificially lit halls. Instead, it is a bright, open space taking up a fair portion of the tenth and final floor of Stark Tower's atrium - and, as if to be purposefully contrary, contains neither plants nor statuary beyond a single, cast aluminum figure which dominates the wall immediately opposite the stairs.

Steve does not make it that far.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) According to the MCU timeline, Bucky Barnes falls to his apparent death on 2/1/45, and Steve goes down with the _Valkyrie_ on 2/5/45. For context, V-E day is 5/8/45 - the 70th anniversary of which is coming up in the fic - and WWII officially ended 9/2/45. Considering the best guesses I can find online suggest Steve was defrosted no more than 3-6 weeks before the events of A1, I've put the date of his defrosting at 4/4/15, 1 month before this chapter. (Also, while trying to figure out what date to make it, I realized that the day of the invasion in this verse, 5/2/15, is also the birthday of Princess Charlotte, so you're welcome to figure out how that fits into the media storm.)  
> 2) At some point, my mind turned the idea of having a _famous painting of flowers_ into _every year on their anniversary, Howard gave Maria an expensive piece of artwork with the appropriate flower for their anniversary_. I'd never heard of flowers for anniversaries before I went looking to see if such a thing existed, but there's a list of them on Wikipedia. Nothing's given for the 21st anniversary, but my google of _famous flower paintings_ came up with the poppies and I seized on it. (Oddly enough, 28th _is_ listed.) All listed paintings are real and either in private collections, stolen, or in a museum in RL.


	21. 4 May, 2015 (III)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Plans. Or, there is almost no chance that the hospitals of New York would not be overrun after the invasion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternately: your author desperately wanted to fit one scene in at the end and finally realized that nothing she could do would make it actually work, so she went ahead and posted what she had. 
> 
> This is not at all the chapter I planned to write, but happened instead. If my muses listen to me at all, the next set of chapters will be an interlude, which will hopefully get us back somewhere on plot, so... cross your fingers.

"I get what you're saying, but wouldn't you rather the hospital have the funding?"

Christine offers him a tired look of disapproval. "And the illusion of impropriety doesn't bother you?"

"Of course it bothers me," Stephen retorts, attempting to maneuver around a member of the janitorial staff pushing a cart of linens easily twice his size, "but as long as everyone involved knows the truth, who cares? They're going to think it anyway, so something good might as well come out of it."

"No one who’s seen you operate or read your work thinks you bought your position - which," she admits somewhat abashedly, "may be your point. But the solution to that isn’t to _buy_ the hospital."

"I never said anything about _buying_ the hospital. I simply suggested making a very large, very pointed donation."

"Bribery then."

"If the board of directors continues to insist they can't afford better resources for their staff," in this case, enough on-call rooms that they don't have residents stacked like logs in the few conference rooms that haven't been turned into emergency wards, "they're either going to start losing staff - which will only make our jobs harder - or - worse - start forcing us to attend their fundraisers."

Christine shudders at the thought as they stumble to stop outside his office, then frowns as she watches him search is pockets in growing consternation. "Please tell me you have your keys, or I swear I don't care what rumors it starts: I will sleep in your doorway if it means I get to _sleep_."

Such is his own exhaustion that it takes Stephen a moment to recall what might have happened to his keys - and anything else that might have been in his pockets before the invasion. "Pocket dimension," he says in a moment of embarrassed insight. Vishanti, he must be more tired than he thought.

"Is this a Douglas Adams thing? 'Cause I'm not getting it."

"No. I-" he begins, then decides he really doesn't want to explain the mechanics of multidimensional transpositional magics right now. Instead, Stephen just holds out his hand and summons the appropriate key.

Christine gives him a flat, unimpressed look as she leans against the wall next to his office.Like many at Metro-General, she thinks the less flashy magics he indulges in while in public are little more than parlor tricks - an incongruous but otherwise harmless hobby for a neurosurgeon to have. Most days this amuses him, but not so much in the immediate aftermath of an _alien invasion_ , which one would think might cause people to widen their minds a little - though to be fair, Stephen hadn't believed either until the Ancient Once had torn his soul from his body and sent him tumbling through the multiverse.

People, he's learned, only see what they want to see.

"You can take the couch," he says once he's gotten the door open. "I'll be fine in the chair."

"You sure? It's your office."

"Trust me, I won't even notice the difference."

 

 

"You're late."

" _A wizard is never late,_ " Stephen counters when his astral form arrives in the New York Sanctum several minutes later, offering the other gathered masters an apologetic smile, _"nor is he early, he arrives precisely when he means to._ ”

Some of the more progressive masters - Drumm, Rama, and Hamir - snort at this, while Simon and Wong just roll their eyes. It's the others - would-be Zealots, like Aster and Kaecilius, and stuffed-shirts, like Minoru and Mordo - that act as if he's committed some grave offense, though whether it's making a joke or being late is anybody's guess with that lot. Though his decision to continue working in the _physical world_ after taking up the mantle of Sorcerer Supreme had been a contentious one, the latter have always been his main detractors.

"Fuck you, Strange. This isn't some medieval court. Some of us have better things to do than wait around for our _lord and master_ to bother to show up."

"Apologies, Lucian. My simple bleeder turned out not to be, but if you'd have preferred me to let the poor man bleed to death so you don't have to miss your shows, I'll be sure to remember that for next time.

Aster lunges forward - hoping to do what, Stephen can't be sure, as Lucian's one of the few physically present in the New York Sanctum and Stephen's body is four miles north in Hell's Kitchen - only to be stopped by a hand - and a hard glare - from Kaecilius. "Let's not waste time arguing. I would prefer to hear why the head of our order chose to interfere in such a visible and precipitous manner in what was clearly a terrestrial affair rather than listen to excuses for his tardiness."

"This isn't a trial," Simon says, coming to Stephen's defense as always. "If Stephen acted the way he did, I'm sure he had a damn good reason for it. The very least we can do is give him some benefit of the doubt."

"Our isolationism has been under threat since the first video cell phone was created," Rama agrees in his own, crisp British accent. "It’s always been a matter of time before we were revealed. Better it is done on our own terms, in a manner which casts us in the best possible light, then though blackmail or gunboat diplomacy."

From his perch halfway up the stairs, Mordo snaps the book he's ostensibly been reading shut, earning a few winces of his own, "That does not mean we should go courting discovery by performing magic in front of news cameras."

"That's not what he was doing!"

"Alien invasion, however devastating, is-"

"Given that the _end of the world_ would mean our own deaths, I think an exception can be made-

"Head of our order or not, it was not his unilateral decision to make-"

"Silence!" Stephen says, snapping his fingers in a way that had taken ages to perfect - but was well worth the practice when the entire room falls silent, whether they want to or not. "What happened in New York was not just a _terrestrial affair_. Because of it, the Mind Stone is now on Earth."

Wong is the first to undo his spell. "Explain," he orders hoarsely. "Now."

So Stephen does, getting as far as _Thanos sent Loki to Earth to obtain the Space Stone_ before-

"Not this again," Kaecilius scoffs. "As _diverting_ as your theories regarding the Second World War are, the Infinity Stones are not necessary to explain Nazi Germany's early successes, nor their loss its eventual defeat. That you continue to insist otherwise is an insult to all those who fought and died in a horrific, but conventional, war."

"The Space Stone is not on Earth," Minoru agrees. "The Space Stone has never been on Earth. We would know if it were."

Simon rolls his eyes. " _Something_ clearly opened the portal above New York City."

"That have been could be science, not magic," Mordo states, setting his book on the newel post and stepping into the center of the grandly misnamed _receiving hall_ that makes up the entryway to the New York Sanctum. "However, we cannot consider ourselves infallible. Had you asked me last week, I would not have thought beings existed within our own dimension capable of invading Earth, and yet I would have been wrong. Perhaps we have been wrong about the Space Stone as well."

"We would have known!"

"Would we?"

"Yes!"

"Obviously not," Stephen says blandly, summoning the Tesseract from the pocket dimension that still holds his cell phone and the rest of his keys and letting it hover in the space above his hand, "as none of you noticed it now."

"Is that-?"

"Careful, Simon! The last person who touched it directly was transported halfway across the universe."

"The Red Skull has also been dead for seventy years," Wong reminds him wryly, stepping closer to make his own careful examination of the Space Stone - while Simon, amusingly, reels so far back his astral form falls through the far wall and into the sitting room beyond before managing to catch himself.

"Considering I spent most of Saturday morning attempting to get it through Captain America's thick head that, no, I couldn't just snap my fingers and make all our problems disappear, I wouldn't count on it."

"So he's the real deal then?"

"Unfortunately - but, as Master Kaecilius would say, that is a _terrestrial affair_. What we must concern ourselves with is how to protect the three Infinity Stones now on Earth." Stephen flicks his wrist and sends the Space Stone back to the pocket dimension - much to the disappointment of the would-be Zealots.

 

 

The plan they reach (read: Stephen convinces them to accept) is this:

The Time Stone will stay with Stephen and, thus, in New York. Master Drumm will increase his already prodigious protections on the Sanctum - and consider the addition of more conventional defenses.

The Mind Stone will go to London after Simon and Master Rama preform a complete overhaul of their security - a task that sets them both grinning in a way that would be absolutely terrifying in other circumstances. It will need a new housing, but as Tony broke the scepter, Stephen feels only the slightest guilt volunteering him to build a replacement.

The Space Stone will go to to Hong Kong with Master Minoru, however much Stephen might prefer otherwise. But Loki had made a convincing argument in the few moments they had between Peter leaving to help Doctor Selvig and Thor's arrival that sending the Tesseract back to Asgard was the obvious move, and that the half of Thanos' army that Tony had not destroyed was almost certainly preparing to head in that direction already. Allowing Thor and Loki to take a decoy back to Asgard would stall Thanos' forces, delaying their advance even if they won the day, and that time could only give Earth more time to prepare.

It's not a perfect plan by any means. Despite the seemingly genuine fear in his eyes, Stephen puts the odds of Loki proposing this scheme so that he might steal the Tesseract for himself without Odin or Thanos being any the wiser at roughly fifty percent. And that doesn't even begin to address the inherent malevolence of the Mind Stone, which may be too insidious for even the Masters of the Mystic Arts to contain, or the ease with which New York and London had fallen the previous timeline. But it's the best they have.

Nearly thirty years of planning, and still the best they can do is hope it will be enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) According to the internet, surgeons have a work week clocking just under 60 hours after residency (during that time, it's legally capped at 80; apparently before this cap it could easily be 100.) Assuming that being Sorcerer Supreme is at best a part-time job, you need the Time Stone just to have any sort of work-life balance.  
> 2) I lost entirely too much time coming up with backgrounds for the assorted masters, none of which are actually reflected here.  
> 3) I also figure that the role the Tesseract played in the MCU version of WWII is probably not very well known.


	22. Interlude: August 1989 (I)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Homecoming: Or, once upon a time, two men traveled thirty years into the past in a desperate attempt to save the universe. This is where they are one year later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternately: Your author wrote several versions of this, and once again what ended up happening was completely different than what was planned, and never actually got to the intended scene because once again it just didn't work. 
> 
> In other news, my muse has been fighting me lately, especially since the more I see about A4 the more I become annoyed at MCU. I'm sorry this is not longer, but despite having the plot planned out, writing has become increasingly difficult.

_Tony Stark,_ the article in _The New Yorker_ begins with characteristic understatement, _is not your typical teenager. At barely fifteen, the heir of legendary weapons developer Howard Stark is already an intellectual powerhouse in his own right. Nearly half of the patents coming out of Stark Industries in the last six months list him as the sole contributor - and a fair portion of the remainder show his hand somewhere in the process._

_Most astoundingly, however, is that these designs aren't for some new form of self-propelled artillery or ground-to-ground missile - the bread and butter of Stark Industries since its founding in 1939. Most instead center on an altogether new area of technology: the personal computer._

_"I prefer to call it a laptop," Stark told me during our interview, sprawled across a bench near the East Lake of his family's Long Island estate, a prototype of the PC in question indeed perched in his lap. "With all the things computers can do these days, it doesn't make sense for us to be chained in place to use them."_

_Portability isn't the only remarkable thing about the Stark Industries Equinox computer. In fact, it might be safe to say that it's what Stark finds_ least _interesting about his revolutionary creation. With a clock rate over twice anything else on the market-_

"Next!"

Stephen shoulders his bag and tucks the magazine under one arm as he moves to the next customs agent in line - a sour-faced woman of indeterminate years and generous girth. "Good evening," he says, handing her his passport and a copy of his visa.

The woman looks at him in a way that suggests the night is far from good and, even if it were, she has no desire to make small talk about it with him or the thousands of others she must deal with each day. "What is the purpose of your visit?"

"Education. I'm returning to start my second year at Harvard."

The woman frowns down at his visa - which, despite being obtained through the ongoing charade that Stephen is the son of his long-dead uncle, Corporal Thomas Strange of the United State Marine Corps, and his far more recently deceased wife, Jennifer Williams of Alice Springs, Australia, is entirely in order - with a look that suggests either deep suspicion or sudden stomach upset. "How long do you intend to stay?"

"Through the end of the spring semester."

"Where will you be staying?"

"A friend of mine has a place in Back Bay. I'll be living there." This isn't entirely true either - though Tony had paid for the place with what might actually be the most cash Stephen has seen in one place outside of Hollywood bank heists, the deed is technically in both their names. But, as Stephen figures this is just a legal fiction made necessary by Tony's physical age, he considers it to be Tony's place.

The woman frowns up at him this time. "Address?" she asks, her tone managing to drip skepticism while remaining completely flat and soporific. Stephen would almost be impressed if he hadn't been flying for nearly two days. As it is, he has to force himself to be mildly pleasant enough to get through this last hurtle before he can get into a taxi and go _home_.

"142 Beacon Street."

She stares at him flatly for what feels like several hours but is probably no more than four or five seconds before, "Do you have anything to declare?"

"No. I had everything shipped ahead."

The woman's eyes narrow. "Welcome to the United States, Mister Strange," she says, sounding as if the words physically pain her, before shoving his passport and visa back into his hands. "Next!"

 

 

The second thing Stephen notices after unlocking the fourth-floor entry to the three-story penthouse Tony had apparently decided qualified as _bare bones off-campus housing_ is the cardboard boxes. Most are neatly broken down, though the few that haven't are wider than Stephen is tall and have been repurposed to hold a bewildering collection of polystyrene packaging.

The first thing he notices - hears, really - is a distinctive guitar riff that's almost loud enough to rattle the windows even before the drums join in.

"'You Shook Me All Night Long,'" Stephen mutters to himself, scrambling over and around the detritus that apparently springs into existence whole cloth whenever Tony is left too long to his own devices, "from AC/DC's seventh studio album, _Back in Black_. Released July 25, 1980. Spent sixteen weeks on the charts, peaking at number thirty-five. Tony, you're reverting to form."

Tony, naturally, doesn't hear him over the pounding bass, but he can hear Tony, joining in with Brian Johnson to belt out, "' _She was a fast machine, she kept her motor clean; she was the best damn woman I had ever seen_...'" as he picks his way up the stairs to the fifth floor.

There's more cardboard on the stairs, this time joined with an impossible array of cabling, snipped zip ties, and a discarded pizza boxes - the latter of which are so numerous that Stephen can feel his own cholesterol levels rising by sheer proximity.

"Tony-" he starts when he reaches the landing, then abruptly stops because-

-because Tony is standing with his back to him in a room just off the landing that might have once been intended as an office or a child’s bedroom but which Tony has instead chosen to fill with a prodigious number of server racks in various stages of construction. He's doing nothing more or less than running cables between two of the racks as he sings along with the music, but it's more than enough to remind Stephen of all the reasons his determination not to act on his attraction until Tony is older are never going to work.

" _'...'Cause the walls start shaking, the earth was quaking, my mind was aching, and we were making it, and you shook me all night long._ '"

"Tony," he tries again, but his mouth is too dry. Vishanti, he _refuses_ to be one of those men who lust after fifteen-year-old _children_ ; it doesn't matter that Tony was older than he in the original timeline, he simply refuses to sink down to that level. It's as simple as that.

"' _Yeah, you shook me all night long-'_ "

"Tony!"

In a single smooth movement, Tony has spun around, smacked the radio into silence, and aimed a small caliber handgun directly at Stephen's heart. In another, he’s slipped the safety back into place and abandoned the pistol on the stepladder besides the now silent boombox. "Stephen," he breathes, eyes going wide. "You came back."

"You know I wouldn’t just leave you to deal with Thanos all on your own."

Tony grins at him, picking his way around what appears to be the upended contents of at least three toolboxes as he makes his way out of the makeshift server room. "And that’s why you’re my favorite."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) For the Equinox, imagine something like the Macintosh Performa 580CD - released in 1995 - suddenly being released just in 1989. That's a big leap in computer technology - especially as I envision this having been achieved via a multi-core design that really didn't hit consumers in RL until 2005. Add in that I've preempted the ThinkPads that really made laptops viable by about 3 years... and, well, you've got something leagues ahead of anything else on the market.  
> 2) Server racks generate an absurd amount of cardboard and Styrofoam. Trust me on this.  
> 3) Yes, that's a [real address](https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/2103968958_zpid/42.411164,-70.993738,42.298389,-71.157331_rect/12_zm/1_fr/%22). Because I research entirely too much.  
> 4) In MA, the age of consent is 16.


	23. Interlude: August 1989 (II)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One Year Later. Or, _finally_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have learned two things about myself in the process of writing this chapter. 1) That I overthink things, to the extent which the first half of this was written immediately after the last chapter... and then I went through about 90 different iterations, time skips, and POVs before I rescued this from version control and tried again. The rest was mostly written over the inadvertent 6 day weekend Dorian caused. (No, really, you should see the background info I made for this fic.) 2) That while I'd planned for angst (and think I am very good at writing it), I am _I think we deserve a soft epilogue, my love. We are good people and we've suffered enough_ at heart (even if I have a hell of a time writing it).
> 
> Thank you to all who read the last chapter and have stuck around, waiting for the update.

"So how was Nepal?" Tony calls, trying to be heard over the sound of the shower in the next room without moving from his backwards sprawl across the bed. (It's a nice bed. He hadn't realized how soft the sheets were when the interior designer he hired was picking them out. If Stephen takes too much longer, he's going to fall asleep like this, fate of the universe be damned.) "You find your wizards?"

"Masters of the Mystic Arts, and yes."

"Then why did you fly back?"

"Believe it our not, I have no pressing desire to explain to the State Department that I not only entered the country illegally, but that I did so using magic."

"Yeah, that sounds like the exact opposite of fun," Tony agrees, scrunching his nose and rolling over onto his stomach so that his head's no longer hanging over the foot of the bed. (It really is soft. Tony knows he's been in a hurry to finish the racks downstairs before school starts back up again, but this bed is seriously making him reevaluate his priorities.) "So, is Saruman going to help us?"

"What?"

Tony lifts his head off the comforter and repeats, "Is Saruman going to help us with Thanos or did you decide not to tell her after all?"

" _Please_ ," Stephen says, sounding faintly pained, "do not call the head of my order _Saruman_."

"Well what else am I supposed to call her? Gandalf's already taken and you get grumpy when I start pulling out Harry Potter references."

"Here's a crazy idea: you could always try calling her by her name."

"I am not calling a grown woman _The Ancient One._ "

"Whatever you say, _Iron Man_."

"You may have a point there," Tony concedes graciously before burrowing further into the blankets. "Air travel makes you irritable, I see."

"What?"

"I said- Oh, never mind."

"Do we have to do this right now? Do you know how hard it is to find hot water in Kathmandu?"

"Probably about as hard as it is to find a working telephone," Tony mutters into the comforter, wiggling around until he can pull one of the knit blankets over his head.

It would be so easy just to fall asleep right now and leave this fight for morning, or to ignore the issue entirely and continue on as they have until the problem refuses to stay buried. But Tony has spent every day of the last three months wondering if the one person he trusts unreservedly in the universe has only been using him - or, even worse and far more likely, had arrived in Kathmandu with every intention of coming home until he came late to the realization that Tony isn't worth it, has never been worth it, and had decided to disappear from his life as suddenly as he'd entered it.

And maybe that's on Tony. Maybe he should have continued to trust, but he's been down this road so many times before. He doesn't think Stephen is in this for any other reasons than the ones Tony already knows - but, then again, he'd never thought Obadiah would try to kill him until the moment he wrenched the arc reactor from his chest, or that Rogers would lie to him about something as fundamental as his parents' deaths until he was watching the surveillance video.

What's worse, he _likes_ Stephen. He likes the contradiction of him - the logical, methodical master of magic able to see the outcome of every eventuality but apparently unable to tell that Tony had been crushing on him since the moment he'd shown up at Tony's dorm room and _told him the truth_. He likes how they are together - their jagged edges, their complimentary natures. The idea that Stephen might feel otherwise is desolating, but Tony will survive.

He always does. What other choice does he have?

He misses the sound of the shower cutting out, but Stephen's voice is unmistakable as it echoes across the tiles, drawing steadily closer. "I have been to countless dimensions, including several actual hell dimensions, but the horrors of the multiverse can’t quite compare to an international flight with crying children. To say nothing of- Tony? Don’t tell me after all that you’ve fallen asleep."

"Ha! Shows what you know." Tony crows from beneath the covers, flailing more than a little as he struggles to untangle himself from the mess he’s managed to make of the bedding so he can express his irritation properly. "I don't sleep."

"Sleep is important."

"So people keep telling me, but I’ve yet to see proof." His head pops free of the blankets. "Besides-"

Oh.

Oh _fuck_.

Stephen had come out of the master bath in pale blue sleep pants and nothing else, looking like a teenage daydream. Tall and dark and lithe and lean, he is-

He is perfect. Too perfect for Tony, who is so broken that he hadn't even been able to bring himself to trust that Stephen would come back from Hogwarts on time, and can barely trust that he's not about to be stabbed in the back now.

"Besides?" Stephen prompts when the silence grows long, broken only by the soft white noise of rain against the windows.

"Besides," Tony continues, searching wildly for his previous thought and eventually coming up with, "I want to know all about Nepal, so don’t distract me."

The smile Stephen gives him is equal parts fond and self-congratulatory. "I think you'll find loss of concentration is one of the symptoms of sleep deprivation."

"Oh, fuck you."

"Do you want to hear about Nepal or not?"

Tony immediately straightens. Patting the empty expanse of sheets beside him, "Start talking, sweetheart."

Stephen rolls his eyes but, to Tony's surprise, perches carefully on the bed beside him and starts talking.

He tells him how, when he first visited Kathmandu in the aftermath of the Gorkha earthquake, it had been electrifyingly exotic - a medieval time capsule into which a bizarre panoply of modern contrivances intruded. Everything had been a riot of sight and sound and color, and so intoxicatingly, exhaustingly different from his life before that, for the longest time, it had felt as surreal as any of the dimensions The Ancient One had shown him.

He tells him how visiting now, over a quarter of a century earlier, walking out of Tribhuvan International Airport had felt like walking off the edge of a cliff and not knowing if he was going to fall or fly. At first he had tried to convince himself that it was an artifact of being in a country on the cusp of a soul-searching civil war, but as he’d wandered the city, trying to appear as if any other aspirant in search of the Kamar-Taj, he’d come to realize it was nerves. Save for a brief run-in with Matilde Sepúlveda the previous Christmas, Stephen had yet to encounter anyone he'd known Before, and the thought of doing so then had been so nerve-racking that he still has no idea how Tony manages it with Rhodey every day.

He tells him how, in the end, he'd dismissed all their carefully laid plans, dressed in the master's robes that had come with him from the future, and casually strolled into the Kamar-Taj during breakfast one morning. He'd sat in the corner of the main courtyard, sipping tea with a thundering heart, waiting for someone to notice him. It had taken longer than he would have thought - for all her ability, even The Ancient One is not all-powerful, - but Stephen had still startled when she appeared suddenly beside him, refreshed his tea, and said with complete equanimity-

 _"So you are to be my successor_."

" _Perhaps. Perhaps not. Despite its appearance, the future is not set in stone._ "

" _Nor, it would seem, is the past._ "

" _Yes, well,"_ Stephen had said, _"_ looking back you do not find what you left behind."

-which had caused her to laugh outright. That, of course, had brought them to the attention of the students and other masters and, although some were skeptical of _The Ancient One's prophesied successor_ , no one could deny his skill.

Stephen even tells him, without prompting, how the monsoon rains had delayed his flight six times, washing out both the runway and the telephone lines.

He tells him everything, and Tony finds himself falling in love all over again.

"Two questions," he says when Stephen finally finishes, the pair of them curled like parentheses on the broad expanse of the bed. The rain, which had at some point turned into a truly torrential downpour, lashes against the windows, drowning the streetlights and threatening to tip Tony over the edge of exhaustion before he can get his answers.

"Only two?"

He pushes himself onto an elbow. "You were always planning on coming back?"

Stephen blinks slowly, languidly up at him. "Yes. Of course. Why wouldn't I?"

"All right. Question two: how badly does my being fifteen freak you out?"

Stephen blinks less slowly, less languidly. "I'm sorry?"

And that's when Tony kisses him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Things that I should not spend as much time worrying about: how sorcerers avoid being brought up on illegal entry charges. (Actually, trying to logic anything about the sorcerers, or the fact that their order was apparently founded roughly 400 years before Odin's _father_ was born. Which means there should be some archeological record of Europeans or Asians in pre-history NYC, if the Sanctums have existed for anywhere near as long, or some genetic remnant, or _something_.)  
> Also, remember Stephen's cover identity is Australian in this 'verse, so at some point the State Department would have reason to look at his passport for things like missing entry/exit stamps... Especially if/when he applies for US citizenship.  
> 2) Because I over-research, I can tell you that getting adequate fuel for cooking et cetera is supposed to be problematic. As is the infrastructure in general.  
> 3) The April 2015 Nepal earthquake (aka Gorkha earthquake) occurred 4/25/15. This puts Stephen's arrival to Nepal in this 'verse to be about four months after his accident, which may be a little quick to burnt through all his other options, but both fits with RL filming and gives him about 18 months of training before The Ancient One dies here...  
> 4) Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu is currently the only international airport in Nepal, though there are others under construction.  
> 5) _“The present changes the past. Looking back you do not find what you left behind,”_ is from Kiran Desai's _The Inheritance of Loss._  
>  6) The comments I've gotten on this fic continue to give me life. I can't promise when I'll update next, but I promise I will try.

**Author's Note:**

> Original Timeline:  
> \- 05/01/1974: Tony's born  
> \- 09/11/1982: Stephen's born  
> \- 06/01/2000: Peter's born  
> \- 01/21/2008: Tony's kidnapping  
> \- 05/01/2008: Tony completes Mark I armor  
> \- 11/25/2008: "I am Iron Man" Press Conference  
> \- 05/04/2012: Battle of New York  
> \- 02/05/2015: Stephen's accident  
> \- 12/21/2016: Stephen becomes Sorcerer Supreme  
> \- 11/01/2018: The Snap
> 
> New Timeline:  
> \- 09/01/1970: Stephen's relative birthdate  
> \- 08/26/1988: Timeline Reset Point  
> \- 05/02/2015: Battle of New York


End file.
